Go to the A. Ol'khovatov Web-site directory in English: www.tunguska.eu5.org
(but most of my web-site is still here: www.olkhov.narod.ru/tunguska/index.html )

"If we want to solve a problem that
we have never solved before, we
must leave the door to the unknown ajar."
Richard Feynman

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CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION

2. THE PROBLEMS OF THE METEORITE FALL INTERPRETATION

3. THE TECTONIC INTERPRETATION

4. CONCLUSION.

5. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

6. REFERENCES

1. INTRODUCTION

The problem of the nature of the 1908 Tunguska event has already excited researchers over the course of many decades, and there is no consensus on Tunguska still.

In the morning of June 30, 1908, the ground trembled north and northwest of Lake Baikal in Central Siberia, and underground jolts struck panic into the hearts of the local population. Reports of a glowing body flying over came from various points of the territory. The Tunguska forest fall, called the "impact/explosion site" or the "epicenter" was discovered just in 1927 at 61 N & 102 E, i.e. in the northern part of the Tunguska event manifestations region. Various conjectures were soon offered in 1908 to explain the nature of the event. The most popular were a meteorite fall, a ball lightning (or its formation) and an earthquake (because of the seismic phenomena). Since official science of the time put in doubt the existence of ball lightning, while the possibility of glow occurring during earthquakes was, as a rule, rejected, and a false report about a meteorite fall near a town of Kansk appeared, the general consensus was that a very large meteorite had come down in Siberia. Attempts to put forward any other interpretation had been quashed for many years.

Since that time the situation with the "meteorite fall" rather resembles a pendulum: one group of scientists turns up new strong evidences that it couldn't have been an asteroid made of stone or iron, thus it had to be a comet.
Pretty soon, another group of scientists comes up with new strong arguments that Tunguska could not have been a comet, thus it must have been an asteroid!
The number of supporters of each idea varies with time. The latest maximum for the "asteroid" was around 1995. Since then, the attractiveness of an asteroid explanation seems to decline again.
These swings hint that both groups are right and wrong at the same time: Tunguska 1908 was neither an asteroid, nor a comet. But then, what was it?

Many researchers seeing the failure of asteroid/comet interpretation proposed other ideas: a "black hole", an "antimatter bullet", a "mirror matter" asteroid, and, of course, UFO (the latter one is, no doubt, the most correct: indeed the event was related with some "unindentified flying object", or sooner with "objects", as it will be shown below!).

In late 1980-s I came up with the idea that Tunguska event was something completely different, not a cosmic, but a geophysical event, associated with tectonic processes. My idea, which in the meantime has been presented at several scientific conferences as well as in scientific journals (including such as SCIENCE and NEW SCIENTIST), should not be confused with an earthquake, although earthquakes were indeed associated with the 1908 explosion. It was a more complicated event of tectonic origin in which atmospheric processes played a large role. So probably we can call Tunguska as tectono-atmospheric phenomenon. Now we can just to admit that it was related with some still poorly understood processes of the Earth electricity, but it is just a speculation.
Unfortunately, till now, such phenomena are a little known and poorly understood. Moreover, there is no scientific term accepted for the phenomena still. I prefer to call it as geophysical meteor (geometeor). You can read about it here. Probably in phenomenological very simplified way it can be often imagined as an explosion of a high-speed ball-lightning tectonic origin.

In [1] the author ("the author" in the present paper means "the present author" i.e. Andrei Ol'khovatov, unless otherwise stated) have published the first time that the Tunguska was a tectonic (endogenic) origin. Later this interpretation was developed in [2-5]. The author also reported it at the International conference "Tunguska 95" (1995) in Moscow, Tomsk, and at the 1998 International Tunguska conference in Krasnoyarsk and later conferences.
The idea gets a support by a group of geophysicists and geologists in Russia and abroad.
Also 3 my books on "tectonic" Tunguska were published in 1997-2008 (one of them with a co-author).

In the mid-1990s I got a proposal to place my point of view on Internet in English. The result is the present article. At first I write about the problems of the meteorite fall interpretation. Then I give examples of mini- and micro-Tunguskas, which I proposed to call geometeor, and apply them to the tectonic interpretation of the 1908 Tunguska.

In this article you can read also about modern mini-Tunguskas, and probable other Tunguskas of the past.

As it is very hard to permanently update this rather large article, so in some places new references are given as Smith J.[2001], and you can contact me for details.
Also I post the latest data in other places of my www-site.

A couple words about term 'tectonic Tunguska'. Its shortcoming is that the term 'tectonic' is usually associated with processes in the Earth crust i.e. in about upper layer of our planet (and does not take into account atmospheric processes). But there are hints (see this web-page) that deeper phenomena were involved too. So the term 'geodynamic' could be better, but it doesn't take into account influence of atmospheric processes too. So the term geophysical seems to be better, but it is too wide. Moreover as I admit a possible influence of solar activity, then what about 'solar-geophysical' or 'astro-geophysical'?...
Currently I incline to slowly drift to 'geophysical' (despite its shortcoming) unless better idea appear.

In the present paper a sign asterisk '*' means a multiplication, 'PI' means the PI-number i,e. 3.14159... , a sign '^' means raising to power (10^(-3)=0.001, for example).

2. THE PROBLEMS OF THE METEORITE FALL INTERPRETATION

Here are, for instance, some of the problems. The author also advises to read Vasilyev N.V. articles at https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/esp_ciencia_tunguska07.htm. and his the most "free/open" article here.

ADDITION of June 30,2019: An interesting abstract of a report for 82nd Annual Meeting of The Meteoritical Society 2019 (LPI Contrib. No. 2157) just appeared. It has many authors starting from G. Kletetschka.
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc2019/pdf/6506.pdf
There are some points adding problems to the "Tunguska asteroid/comet impact". Here I comment just one of them.

------------------------------------
THE ABSTRACT:
While the content of Fe dropped from 160 ppm to 19 ppm the magnetic susceptibility increased two fold. This is an evidence of quick and intense burst of energy, melting vapourizing the dust, causing agglutination of the dust material. This resulted in a ubiqui- tous presence of nanophase iron with large magnetic susceptibility that became part of molten dust particulates and deposited in the lake sediment. Anomalous elemental increase in lake suggested possible allochtonous material. Paleomagnetic data revealed presence of plasma during the TE near rock surfaces.
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MY COMMENT:
According to the "Tunguska asteroid/comet impact" idea there were no plasma near the ground.
So the data obtained contradicts the 'Tunguska spaceimpact' idea!

2.1. THE EYEWITNESSES ACCOUNTS

As above-mentioned, the reason to attribute the Tunguska to the fall of a meteorite was the reports about flying fiery body. For a science of 1908 it means just a meteorite and nothing else. But let's look at these 'flying bodies' carefully from our modern knowledge. Here and below after geographical denominations, the distances from the Tunguska explosion epicenter and azimuths in degrees from the epicenter, measured from the north to the east are also given ( and you can find a catalog of Tunguska witness's accounts in Russian here).

Let's read some witness's accounts.

• Nizshne-Karelinskoye (465 km, 133). Extremely bright (it was impossible to look at it) luminous body was seen rather high in the north-western sky soon after 8 a.m. It looked like a tube (cylinder) and for 10 minutes moved down to the ground. The sky was clear, but only in the side, where the body was seen, a small dark cloud was present low above the horizon. While coming to the ground, the body dispersed (flattened) and at this place a large puff of black smoke appeared. Then a flame emanated from this cloud.

Some details of the observed phenomena and especially the duration hardly conform to the meteorite fall.

• Nizshne-Ilimskoye (419 km, 168). The fireball was seen which while going to the ground at first flattened into 'flying saucer'. Then coming nearer to the ground it transformed into 2 fire columns.
• Os'kino (330 km, 89). Innokentii Farkov said a gradually rising boom coming from afar was heard since morning hours. The old men, thinking their dying hours had come, were changing into clean shirts, and one of them even washed in the bath house to meet the death clean. The ground trembled as a black body flew past, trailing a fiery tail.
• Kezhma (214 km, 193). This settlement is a good example to demonstrate the strange (for the meteoritic interpretation) property of the Tunguska accounts: as usually different luminous phenomena were reported by different eyewitnesses from the same place. In Kezhma they were: a flying luminous cloud, multicolored luminous bands, a fireball, a flame over the northern horizon. For example, Kokorin A. K., the observer of the Kezhma meteorological station marked in the observational register (pay attention to EVIDENTLY HIGH TRUSTWORTHINESS of this information!) that at 7 a.m. two giant fiery circles appeared on the north. They persisted for 4 minutes and then disappeared. Soon after, noise, like a wind was heard. It came from the north to the south and its duration was 5 minutes. Then other sounds, resembling large cannon shots and crackling appeared. Windows trembled. These shots continued for 2 minutes, then a crackling like a gun shot appeared and persisted for 2 minutes. The sky was clear.
• Tetere (92 km, 165). Fire columns were seen in the north.
• Vanavara (65 km, 161). Nobody saw any fireball. A bright flame shooting up from the north horizon was seen.

Dyomin, Dmitriev, and Zhuravlev [1984] conducted analysis of "what did the witnesses see", based on complete data-set of the accounts [Vasilyev, Kovalevskii, Razin, et al., 1981]. The result is as follows:

Shape of the flying luminous body        Percentage of accounts

a ball-like                                  18.8
a cylinder                                   16.3
a cone-like                                  2.1
a star-like                                  3.4 
a "tail-like"                                14.0
a "snake-like"                               2.3
a lightning-like                             2.1
stripes of light                             2.5
pillars of fire                              4.9
a flame                                      10.3
a sparks-like                                11.2
other forms                                  12.1

The eyewitness's accounts are hardly conformed with the meteorite fall. Even just in a few days-weeks after the event different time was given by different people, from early morning to the afternoon. So was the duration - from a few minutes to an hour. Astronomer Yevgenii Krinov, writing in his book "The Tunguska meteorite" published in 1949, about this side of evidence frequently uses phrases like, "the eyewitnesses either confused the cardinal points or just forgot the details".

All researchers noted, however, that the stories told by the local Evenks sounded true and were nearly always confirmed by other evidences later. The following story was typical for the area close to the epicenter. Two Evenk brothers, Chuchancha and Chekaren, sleeping in their tent (tepee) were suddenly awaken by shaking. They heard whistling sounds and "sensed a strong wind". One of them was pushed so heavily that his head struck a supporting pole and he fell on the hot embers in the fire-place. From outside came a hideous noise and sounds of trees falling. The brothers were about to dash out of the tent when a deafening thunderbolt clapped. The ground started to tremble and sway, and, a ferocious gust of wind toppled the tent. One of the men saw from under the immobilizing poles falling trees, their branches set on fire, and the dry unbrushed and moss burning. All the place was wrapped in smoke and it was so hot the brothers feared they "could be grilled alive". Suddenly a bright lightning flashed over the hill, as if another sun suddenly went up, and a series of thunderclaps followed immediately. Several more "lightning" flashes and claps of thunder, and the frightening sounds look like fading.

Evenk woman, Akulina, who was together with several Evenks in a tent (36 km, 121) said that suddenly "somebody strongly pushed our tent". Then it repeated again, and they fell on the ground. A loud noise came from outside, "somebody rattled and knocked the tent's cover". Suddenly bright light appeared, the bright sun was shining, strong wind was blowing". After "somebody fired (shot) and at once a whirlwind arrived". Akulina was frightened and lost consciousness. When she saw as a whirlwind "danced", she recovered. The whirlwind put her down. When she looked at the forest, she saw stems without branches and leaves. Many trees were put down. Wood bedding was burning. Ivan, her husband was thrown about 40 meters, his arm was broken and soon after he died (the another Evenk, who was in the tent told the same story, being interrogated independently).

Evenk, Ul'kigo (56 km, 176) said that suddenly in the early morning dogs began to howl, and small children cried. The persons inside the tent felt that "somebody began to knock the ground below them and to swing a tent". When Ul'kigo got out from the sleeping bag and began to put the clothes on, "somebody pushed the earth strongly" (right before it, "somebody fired from a gun a lot"). Suddenly again "just like somebody hit the earth". Utensils fell inside the tent. A loud thunderclap followed. When Ul'kigo got out from the tent, and looked at the sky, he suddenly saw a bright flash on the clear sky with following thunderclap. Ul'kigo was so frightened that he fell on the ground. He saw as wind put down trees and burning dry wood bedding. After Ul'kigo stood up, a whirlwind struck. The knocking, smoke and thunderclaps continued for some time.

Other eyewitnesses from the epicentral area gave similar reports. What has all that to do with the meteorite fall? Many other eyewitnesses also reported about luminous phenomena ( columns, stripes, lightning, flame, red sky glowing, etc.) which hardly resembled the meteorite fall.

Remarkably, that even supporters of the "meteorite fall" have to recognize that practically nobody of numerous witnesses saw any trail left by the "Tunguska fireball"...

Here is a translation from Russ. of a fragment of a letter sent by a prominent Soviet ethnographer I.M. Suslov ( about I.M. Suslov read here http://defendgaia.org/bobk/evenkiv.html ) to a Soviet journalist in 1961 (original in Russ. is taken from http://tunguska.tsc.ru/ru/science/mat/oche/31-60/d-041/ ):

...The article "Agdy" presents in detail the stories of the Tungus (Evenks), who flew above the forest, and saw (below them) a burning forest, smoke, survived the horror of rumbling, strikes and were on the verge of loss of reason. They told in detail about the details of the disaster. All of this was recorded in the well-established Tungus-Russian Angarsk dialect, which contributes to a brighter view of the catastrophe by the reader. But the most interesting there, in my opinion, is a detailed description of Munzhen (general assembly of voters under the modern constitution), the historical meeting of the Evenks on the arrow of the Chunya River, where in early June of the 26-year the first lower-ranking organs of Soviet power were elected ) and with them tribal courts. At the end of this meeting, I was able, as an experiment in anti-religious propaganda, to raise the question of where the meteorite fell. The experience was a success. He called the Evenks to frankness at such an authoritative meeting. As a result, all the stories of individual victims (flying) and the participation of dozens of delegates - voters were confirmed; ...

So the stories if the poor people who flew over taiga were confirmed at the Munzhen. But how could the hypothetical Tunguska spacebody generate the air-shock wave which transported the Evenks over the forest (already burning which hints that they were not far from the epicenter) and leaving them shaken but alive? It resembles tornado action...
Unfortunately the Suslov's article "Adgy" was never published...

Here is one of the most interesting accounts given by Evenk who was close to the epicenter. Here I just copy from the academician N.V. Vasilyev article https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/esp_ciencia_tunguska07.htm

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The accounts by Evenks are especially important as they are natural hunters and pathfinders, and their life depends on their senses and memory. So even Krinov who was used to write about "witness's confusion" had to recognize (in his book 'Tunguska meteorite', published in 1949) regarding Evenk's accounts that: "...we must note that many stories, as it later became known, during the expeditions, they proved remarkably accurate."
Please pay attention that the Evenks accounts conform with the geophysical interpretation of Tunguska.

On the basis of the eyewitness's accounts, three probable trajectories of the "Tunguska spacebody flight" were reconstructed (see also above). The first one was southern i.e. the meteorite flight from the south to the north (proposed and supported by Voznesenskii A., Kulik L. and Astapovich I. since 1920-s). Then in 1949 Krinov Ye. put forward the southeastern trajectory. Finally in the early 1960-s the eastern trajectory was proposed based on eyewitness accounts as well as on a pattern of the forest fall. Clearly, the meteorite could not have come from so many directions!

Remarkably that there are witnesses who stated that some anomalous phenomena commenced before 'fall' (i.e. before 00.14 UTC June 30, 1908). For example an outstanding Soviet ethnographer Sevyan Izrailevich Vainshtein ( http://en.tuvaonline.ru/2008/10/20/4204_vainshtein.html ) was in expeditions in the settlement Sulomay ( ~580 km to the west of the epicenter ) in the late 1940s. Some of the local residents were witnesses of Tunguska ( the Vainshtein's article in Russian is here: http://www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/14336/ ). In brief: the witnesses stated that the anomalous skyglow commenced ~2 days before Tunguska! Also during Tunguska there was a windstorm in there which put down trees.
Vainshtein informed some scientists who studied Tunguska about the accounts after his return to Moscow, but the scientists did not believe them as the accounts contradict the meteorite-fall... See about the Sulomay's accounts for details here in English:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ter.12453

Anyway there are several important conclusions from the accounts collected by Vainshtein.

1) There was the bright night phenomenon at Sulomay on the night June 29-June 30, and maybe even on the previous night[s]. The bright night phenomenon was in a very strong form.

2) A very bright bolide was seen near Sulomay on the "Tunguska morning".

3) There was a windstorm which put down tall trees near Sulomay on the "Tunguska morning". .

Sulomay is situated at azimuth 282.7 degrees and distance 577 km from the Tunguska epicenter. There is a second-hand account from the settlement of Podkamennaya Tunguska (Vasil'ev et al., 1981) which is situated at azimuth 282.3 degrees and distance 632 km from the Tunguska epicenter. The account stated about a seeing (on the early morning in 1908) as a fiery long strip flashed across the sky, and hearing accompanying thunder as from a cannon. There are numerous first-hand, as well as second-hand accounts about strong wind during Tunguska (Vasil'ev et al., 1981). One of farthest was from the place Yessey situated at azimuth 0.8 degrees and distance 843 km from the Tunguska epicenter (Vasil'ev et al., 1981). However Sulomay is the farthest known one where the wind was strong enough to produce a forest-fall.

The Tunguska accounts collected by S. Vainshtein confirm that manifestations of the 1908 Tunguska event were not localized near its epicenter, but spread over a rather large territory, including to far west from the Tunguska epicenter. Also the accounts confirm that bright night phenomenon commenced before the explosion.

"Now, among the local population, individual witnesses of the phenomenon of 1908 are still alive and many stories related to it are transmitted. So, Tikhon Verkhoturov from Kezhma (on the Angara River) says that "shooting went on for about an hour" north-east of Kezhma, and glass from the windows flew out from the sound. In the trading post Strelka (on Chun) lives Evenk, "about 92 years old", who remembers "how the sky burned, deer fled away" and so on. It is unlikely that these memories now have great scientific value, because after the prescription these eyewit- nesses can distort the facts and incorrectly convey the nature of the phenomenon".

2.2. THE FOREST FALL

Below here is a map by W. Fast of the famous "butterfly" pattern of the Tunguska forest-fall (its epicenter is 60.9 N, 101.9 E).

In 2005 Italian researchers with their Russian colleagues presented a new much more complete map. Here it is taken from:
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Giuseppe Longo, Mario Di Martino, Gennady Andreev, et al. - A new unified catalogue and a new map of the 1908 tree fall in the site of the Tunguska Cosmic Body explosion //In: Asteroid-comet Hazard-2005, pp. 222-225, Institute of Applied Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2005.
---------------------------------

In the map there are several colors - it is so called 'reliability degree'. The Italian authors explain:

" We have introduced a reliability degree for each trial area averaged azimuth. In Fig. 3, the white, gray and black areas correspond to a high, medium and low reliability, respectively. In the figure, the external frame represents the kilometer coordinates, while the inner - the geographical ones. "

" The new unified catalog and the new map (Longo et al. 2005) have been constructed using a number of tree azimuths and trial areas several times larger than those considered in Fast's analyses. Moreover, we have introduced a reliability degree for each trial area averaged azimuth. The reliability degree has been assigned on the basis of the percentage of singletree azimuths that lay in a sector of 15^o centered on the averaged azimuth. "

The reliability degree shows how well-ordered is the forestfall in some place/area.
Also it could be speculated that if to propose that Tunguska was an explosion and trees were felled by the air-shock-wave-caused aerial disturbance, then the trees felled by the Tunguska explosion should be fallen in approximately one direction (in some place/area). So if in some area trees fell in approximately one direction then it is a good reason (in the frame of the proposal) to assign them to the Tunguska explosion. Such an area would have the high reliability degree. But if the trees lay in various directions in some place, then such an area would have the low reliability degree, as it is not completely clear whether the trees were uprooted by the Tunguska event indeed.

On the map it is seen that outer-borders of the forestfall have low reliability degrees. Near the outer-borders 'influence' of the Tunguska event was already small, and even directions of trees fallen by Tunguska may be affected by various local factors, and moreover as the number of the 'Tunguska uprooted trees' was small in there, so they could be 'dissolved' by trees fallen by other (none-Tunguska) reasons.

A remarkable feature of the map is absence of the high reliability degree to the west of the epicenter. In other words to the west of the epicenter trees were felled by Tunguska rather chaotically or/and their number was small and they were 'dissolved' by trees felled by none-Tunguska reasons. Both variants hint that the Tunguska explosion influence was rather weak to the west of the epicenter.

This is in agreement with result obtained by J.F. Anfinogenov and his group. In the mid-1960s J.F. Anfinogenov made a map of '100%-uprooting area' ( the map is based on aerial photo-survey conducted no later than 1949). Here it is from his (with Budaeva L.I.) book 'Tungusskie etyudy':

It is seen from the map that there was no 'total uprooting' to west of the epicenter!
This rather striking peculiarity of the Tunguska forestfall must be explained!

Let's look whether do modern numeric/computer stimulations explain the peculiarity.
Since mid-1960s numerous attempts were conducted to numerously stimulate the forest fall by a meteoroid explosion (disintegration, to be exact). The researchers try to adjust parameters of the alleged spacebody fall (angle of its infall, its speed, energy, etc.) the best way to fit results into real Tunguska data.
One of the most detailed one was this one:
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http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007LPI....38.1537A
Lunar and Planetary Science XXXVIII (2007)
3D EFFECTS OF TUNGUSKA EVENT ON THE GROUND AND IN ATMOSPHERE. - N. Artemieva and V. Shuvalov
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Here what they got (see Fig.2 with its signature and accompanying text from their work):

" Fig.2 shows distributions of maximum pressure and maximum horizontal velocity for a 45^o impact (10 Mt of TNT). Maximum pressure exceeds standard atmospheric pressure 1.5 times within the 5-km-diameter area and remains high enough (10% above standard) within the area larger by an order of magnitude (50-km-diameter). However, the taiga fallout is caused by dynamic loading, i.e. winds, rather than by static pressure. Nuclear weapon tests in early 60-ies allow us to estimate critical values for winds: minimal action occurs at the speed below 25 m/s, some damage (30%) at winds of 40-45 m/s, and maximal effect (90% damage) at speeds exceeding 55-65 m/s. According to our model, there are no strong winds in the epicenter: the speed is less than 30 m/s approximately within the same area as maximum pressure. This is in good agreement with survived trees ("telegraph forest", where almost all dead trees remain standing upright like "telegraph poles" with their crowns torn off). Maximum wind speed (contours in magenta color, > 50 m/s) occurs in two spots, resembling the famous butterfly wings. There is no fallout outside the area where the wind speed is below 20 m/s (yellow contours). The total modeled damaged area is around 1700 km [2], i.e. a bit less than available data. This discrepancy may be due to specific conditions near the Tunguska site, trees' weakness because of local soil, swamps and permafrost, intensive wildfires. Some observed peculiarities in the actual fallout (strips, deviations from radial direction) may be explained by the local landscape, assumed absolutely flat in the model. "

Remarkably that the authors of the modelling twice wrote: 'may be'... Or 'may be' not... Who knows... Who cares...

Anyway the authors of the modelling wrote that 'The forest between two blue contours is totally damaged'. The above-given image by John Anfinogenov shows that to the west from the epicenter the reality is completely different.
Krinov wrote in his 1949 book ( from http://tunguska.tsc.ru/ru/science/1/2/8/ ) about some peculiarities of the forestfall (translated by Andrei Ol'khovatov with help of google-translate):

Along the banks of the Hushmo River, especially to the west of the expedition's pier, i.e., upstream, clumps and groves of the growing forest are more and more common, and already at a distance of only a few kilometers significant sections of the untouched forest are preserved, which are like islands inside total forestfall and dry dead standing trees. The safety of these groves is not always clear, as often around them there are no obstacles to the propagation of the blast wave. Moreover, sometimes near the areas of the growing forest on flat areas there are only flattened trees, oriented to the basin, located at a distance of 5-8 km to the north-east. It seems that the blast wave acted far unevenly around the meteorite's place of impact and that not only the terrain had a protective effect. It was possible to conclude that the blast wave had a "ray-like" character and, as it were, "snatched" individual sections of the forest, where it produced a continuous collapse of it or other destruction. Such "snatching" of individual sections was especially well observed when looking at aerial photographs related to the terrain located at a distance of 2-3 km west of the meteorite impact site.
(...)
From the tops of the northern hills, the author clearly saw the blue taiga, located immediately beyond the Swan Lake and extending north of it. As far as it was possible to determine during the observations, from a distance of about 6-8 km, this section of the surviving taiga is located on an elevated, unprotected place. Therefore, the preservation of the forest from the action of the blast wave in the indicated place is completely incomprehensible.
(...)
Further, in the indicated areas, the unevenness of the forest collapse - "grabbing" was striking. In some places one could see separate glades, where the forest was tumbled down completely. But right there, nearby, there were areas with a standing growing forest. The contours of the sites with the fall out of the forest are formless and there is no way to find them in relation to the Southern Swamp.

Here a map with living trees near the Tunguska epicenter (Florensky,1963). There are the following marks on the map: 1) directions flattened (uprooted) trees; 2) standing dry dead trees damaged by fire; 3) surviving trees; 4) the Kulik expedition's huts.

Another interesting research was done by Mark Boslough
https://share-ng.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/asteroid.html
In there Mark came to conclusion that 15 Mt energy deposition is too much as:

" 3D simulation of a 15 megaton explosion that is initiated 18 km above the surface, for an asteroid entering at an angle of 35 degrees above the horizontal. Box dimensions are 40 km wide, 20 km high. Colors indicate speed. The hot fireball decends to the surface and slides downrange at high velocities, subjecting the landscape to blast-furnace condtions. This did not happen at Tunguska. "

Anyway let's look at snapshot of the Boslough's video
http://www.sandia.gov/videos2007/2007-6514PFvmag-tun2.4.mpg

" Map view of blast zone from 3-D simulation of a 5 megaton explosion. Axes are labeled in centimeters, and colors indicate wind speed. Expanding oblong shape is the blast wave moving along the surface, blowing down trees with wind speeds decreasing from high hurricane force of 60 m/s (magenta) to below 20 m/s (yellow). "

In 2008 Boslough presented at the conference in Moscow devoted to 100th Anniversary of Tunguska the following slide:

And here is one more important factor pointed out by Evgenii Ivanovich Vasil'ev. According to research by Aleksei Vasil'evich Zolotov (1969), concentrations of the fallen trees direction's intersections in the northeast part of the forestfall are inside this (i.e. northeast) part (see the left picture on the image below where red lines mean directions of the fallen trees).
(see http://tunguska.tsc.ru/ru/science/1/zol/4/12/ for details of the Zolotov's calculations)
Also concentrations of the fallen trees direction's intersections in the southeast part of the forestfall are inside the southeast part.

It looks like Boslough admitted some problems with accuracy of his modelling. So in the work published in 'Near-Earth Objects' Vol. 822 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences May 30, 1997 'Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Plume-forming Collisions on Earth' by MARK B.E. BOSLOUGH AND DAVID A. CRAWFORD

" A 15 degree upslope results in a secondary Mach stem (in addition to the one that forms from the flat-ground reflection) that increases the dynamic pressure by a factor of 3 for weak shock, so the topography at Tunguska would naturally lead to concentrations of blast wave energy far beyond the distance that would be calculated assuming flat terrain. One must assume that the most distant fallen trees were in such areas, so a yield estimate based on the extent of treefall would be too high. <...> The contour map of Fast [17] shows a high degree of bilateral symmetry, but there arc also significant deviations that arc probably related both to topography and pre-impact inhomogeneities in the taiga. A useful next step would be to perform high resolution 3D simulations of impacts, using actual topography data from Tunguska. "

An obligation of argumented explanation of the Tunguska forestfall features lays on those who claim that: 'my work explains the forestfall'.
More than 2 decades past from that time but a model which can explain the 'only weak forestfall to the west' does not appear still...

Another intriguing detail of the forest fall is that despite the central area of the forest fall is often considered to be covered with standing trees, there are traces of the radial forest fall even in this area too! From the traces, Kulik even came to conclusion about 2-3 closely spaced epicenters!

It is also remarkable, that results of the 'Tunguska spacebody explosion' modelling point to an angle of inclination of the hypothetical spacebody trajectory must be about 40 degrees (otherwise it is not possible to get resemblance with the Tunguska forest-fall pattern (see the text above)), while from witness's accounts it must be no more than about 10-15 degrees. Indeed in the case of inclination of the trajectory 30 deg. and more the hypothetical meteoroidal fireball could be seen (from distances several hundred miles) just in directions close to the epicenter and relatively low in the sky, which does not conform with the eyewitnesses accounts.

Advocates of of the 'Tunguska spaceimpact' are well aware of the 'inclination problem' ( see for example V. Bronshten article 'Trajectory and orbit of the Tunguska meteorite revisited' here http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1999M%26PSA..34..137B ), and try various 'tricks' to increase the inclination from the eyewitnesses accounts (the early trajectory estimations based on accounts gives the inclination just 7-8 degrees). However even such prominent advocate of the 'Tunguska spaceimpact' as V. Bronshten has to recognize that:

For the most part of the trajectory, its inclination could not exceed 15° . However, it is seen from aerodynamic calculations that the combined action of the gravity field and a nonzero aerodynamic lift could increase the inclination to 40° as the end of the trajectory was approached.

I hope that advocates of the Tunguska spaceimpact will model 'the combined action of the gravity field and a nonzero aerodynamic lift' to test the Bronshten idea. Till now it is not done, but other Tunguska researchers debunked the idea - see, for example, Andrei Zlobin's article here http://tunguska.tsc.ru/ru/science/tv/8/10/ where he evaluated needed aerodynamical overloads ). So the 'inclination problem' persists...

Detailed investigation of the Kulikovskii forest-fall conducted by various researchers has shown that there are remarkable deviations of the forest fall from the radial pattern all over the area. The deviations are shown on the picture below (out of scale). The deviations are larger to the east of the epicenter (especially large in the south-east sector of the forest-fall).

Another puzzle for the meteorite interpretation is the area of the forest fall on the ridge Chuvar (~24 km, 279), which according to the local Evenks have formed the same morning as the general (Kulikovskii) one. It was discovered by the 1959 expedition. Here is how it was discovered from a book by Vasil'ev N., Demin D., Erokhovets A., et al. - Po sledam Tungusskoi katastrofy. Tomsk, 1960. (translated by me = Andrei Ol'khovatov). The fragment says about a group of 3 researchers who explored a region to the west from the Tunguska epicenter in the direction of the mountain marked on a map as 'height-593'.

" Soon the terrain began to rise gently in the direction to the north-west. There was no forestfall already a long ago - it was over five kilometers from the Khushma-river already. There was the old larch forest around, which thickly overgrew the eastern margin of the foot of the height-593.

And suddenly the terrain landscape changed dramatically. The eastern slope was quite steep, and here, on this slope, the group again entered the forestfall zone, and even what the forestfall! Such a picture none of the three did see either on the Makikta-river, or to the south of the Hushma-river, or on the path of Kulik. The landscape seemed fantastic: huge trees, almost up to a meter across, were uprooted, sketched at each other, split like matches. All this, interlaced with red blocks of lichen-covered stones, seemed to be the trail of some devastating whirlwind, a tornado, a typhoon. At first the forestfall was completely disorderly; then (closer to the peak), trunks began to be located in a familiar way - the treetops in one direction, the roots in the other, but the direction of the fall of the trunks was directly opposite to that which is observed in the region investigated by Kulik: the treetops indicated here to the east, and the roots to the west. The impression was created that the group encountered a new center of catastrophe, lying about thirty kilometers to the west of Kulik's huts. "

The Kulikovskii (right on the picture above) and Chuvarskii (left on the picture above) forest-falls resemble as produced by intensive air-jets (like meteorological downburst and burst swath - see also below).

By the way, there are reports about more forest-falls appeared about June 30, 1908 in the region. Here is just one example from English translation of the L.A. Kulik early report ( https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1935PA.....43..499W/abstract , http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/t2png?bg=%23FFFFFF&/seri/PA.../0043/600/0000501.000&db_key=AST&bits=4&res=100&filetype=.gif ):

"More concrete data about the destruction of the forest by a wind blast are furnished by an inhabitant of the village Krasnoyarovo, of the district of Kirensk, of the government of Irkutsk, V. M. Arbatsky, in answer to a questionnaire of the Meteorite Expedition. After giving a description of the phenomenon, containing nothing new, he adds: "In the region reached by going from the small river Tunguska along the little river Ayan for about 15 versts, I noticed a broad strip of completely uprooted forest, extending along the road for about one verst. As for the more remote regions [i.e. farther away from the road] I have no knowledge." "

2.3. THE TREES BURN

Some cases of the ignition of wood bedding were reported up to 34 km from the epicenter [9] and even probably farther (see section 2.1). But according to the Tunguska meteorite model it means that everything alive would completely burn at the epicenter. For example, according to the Tunguska meteorite model, the radiant exposure at the distances 5-9 km from the epicenter is about 300 J per sq. cm [7], but it means that right at the the epicenter the radiant exposure is about 1200-1700 J per sq.cm!
(LATER ADDITION: Interestingly that a decade later i.e. in 2006 V.V. Svetsov confirmed this: "Numerical simulations [3,4] show that the thermal energy delivered to the ground by radiation peaks at about 1 kJ/cm2 at the explosion epicenter." (Lunar and Planetary Science XXXVII (2006), abstr.1553)).

In 2019 there was an article 'A model for thermal radiation from the Tunguska airburst' by Christopher O. Johnston , and Eric C. Stern in ICARUS v.327, pp.48-59. Rather interesting article but there is one big problem with it - it considers a source of the burn ('Tunguska bolide') too high above the ground, while all published research on locating the source of the burn (several methods were used by several groups of authors) locate the source at about 5-6 km altitude (or 7 km at the most). Higher altitude is very unlikely, while there is some small possibility of lower altitudes.

If somehow to 'adjust' the radiant exposure to lesser values, then this helps a little, as the key peculiarity of the burn is its spotty (irregular) character. A good illustration of this is a map of the trees burn by L'vov Yu.A. and Vasil'ev N.V. (Voprosy meteoritiki, Tomsk,1976; unfortunately the quality of production-printing of the article was not good):

There is another map (to better understand position of the tested trees ) by V.A. Vorob'ev, A.G. Il'in and I.K. Doroshin (Fenomen Tunguski, Nobosibirsk, str.9,2008) which is shown below:

Regarding the forest fire - it was also peculiar. It was was rather moderate (or even weak) and started in many places ('spotty' - separated by 'no-forestfire' areas) in the region (simultaneously, as experts write), and it was almost stationary.

From the character of the trees damage it concludes that at first was the breaking of branches and then a burn at the site of the break [9, 12]. In other words, for the meteorite explosion interpretation it means that the air-shock wave from the explosion came faster than light impulse!

The author also would like to mention the local Evenks reports about spots of melted sand and soil.

2.4. THE SEISMIC PHENOMENA, CHELYABINSK-2013 (briefly) AND PRECURSORS

Here are just several examples of the seismic phenomena accompanied the Tunguska:

• Troinaya guba (railroad post) (1034 km, 171). Noise, probably subterranean, was heard. Soon after rather large screes were found.
• Tolsty myis (1020 km, 170). About 8 a.m. the icon-lamp (suspended?) swung and the lamp-oil splashed out. The icon (picture) standing on a shelf fell.
• Zshyimigitskii stan (1017 km, 176). From 8 a.m. to 8.20 a.m. the majority of the population felt the shivering of the ground.
• Manzurka (860 km, 161). At about 12 noon subterranean rumble was heard accompanied with soft jolt.
• Korostelyovo (684 km, 215). Due to shocks the horses fell on their knees.
• Kansk (635 km, 217). The first shock caused the doors, windows and suspended lamps to swing. A rumble was heard. About 5 to 7 minutes later there was a second more severe shock also accompanied with a rumble. A minute later there was a further shock less severe than the preceding two.
• Eniseisk (609 km, 248). At some houses windows rattled and suspended lamps swung.
• Ingash (605 km, 213). Gendarme Denisenko L. in his very interesting letter of July 5 wrote that about 8 a.m. he was was sitting on a bench and suddenly felt sick (nausea), like he felt in 1906, when an earthquake took place. This time exactly the same feeling was. He lay down the bench and at this moment 3 strong thunderclap occurred, causing windows to rattle. The thunderclaps seemed to originate right to the north-east and very close to him. Peals of the thunderclaps came out on the surface of the ground with large noise to the south. It was cloudless, but it seemed like a bit of fog.
• Taishet (594 km, 204). At 6.30 a.m. severe shock. All houses shook. In the villages to the north from Taishet the shock was stronger and different objects fell in houses.
• Shamanskie vodomernyie postyi (591 km, 180). Windows vibrated, trees bent. Their leaves shook. It was clear and calm.
• Zolotie priiski (golden mines) (about 527 km, about 240). The buildings crunched. The equipment shook. Dust climbed from the ground. Horses fell on their knees. Utensils fell. Panic spread.
• Zaitsevo (501 km, 235). Windows rattled. Some of them were broken.
• Kirensk (491 km, 131). Shocks lasted for 45 minutes. Windows rattled. Weak swing.
• Nizshne-Zaimskoye (484 km, 168). Furniture and utensils fell.
• Karelino (463 km, 135). Strong jolts and quakes. Windows broken.

There are several intriguing aspects of the seismic observations. As, for example, that in some places seismic disturbances occured several hours later than in others. This effect is a typical for all witness's accounts data, as it was discovered by Dyomin et al. in 1984, and the effect is not on a border of statistical dispersion, but forms a secondary weaker statistical maximum at about 12 noon.

Another aspect is the long duration of the seismic events (up to 45 minutes) as reported by numerous witnesses. It is in complete agreement with recordings by nearest Irkutsk seismic station (see below).

I = 1.5M - 3lgR + 2.5

Such behaviour of seismic waves generated aby a bolide air-burst is clearly seen with the 2013 Chelyabinsk bolide, where (from Heimann S., Gonzalez A., Wang R., Cesca S., Dahm T. - Seismic Characterization of the Chelyabinsk Meteor's Terminal Explosion - Seismological Research Letters, 2013. Vol. 84. N6. p.1021):

Unlike tectonic earthquakes or underground explosions, the body waves are almost absent, and sharp onsets cannot be identified even at the closest station, ~220 km away. Almost no seismic energy is detected above 0.1 Hz, or on transversal components, in contrast to tectonic earthquakes with similar seismic moment.

Interestingly, there is a report from the Stepanovskii mine, a short distance from the town of Yuzhno-Yeniseisk, that an earthquake struck this area at 23.43 UT June 29, i.e. a half hour before the "fall of the Tunguska meteorite" [5].

2.5. THE CHEMICAL TRACES

No any "Tunguska meteorite" fragments were discovered. And many years ago it was proposed that the meteorite completely burn out into dust (even despite that it resembles a story about a snake which completely swallowed itself, commencing with its tail...). Recently the attempt was done to calculate the burn-out [7,17]. In the author opinion this attempt can't explain the absence of the fragments, because:

a)Even the results of [7,17] conclude that it must be a lot of small fragments a few kilometres from the epicenter. As already mentioned, despite many years of careful search - no one found. And no large quantity of extraterrestrial dust (droplets) was found in the epicentral area. The results of a search for globally dispersed the meteorite dust also are negative [18].

If you are interested in Tunguska geochemistry, then I would like to advise you to read this group of articles by Evgenii Kolesnikov with coauthors. Kolesnikov wrote many articles on "discovering Tunguska spacebody substance" since late 1970s. Here is a link to an article by Rasmussen, Kaare L.; Olsen, Hans J. F.; Gwozdz, Raymond; Kolesnikov, Euginev M.: "Evidence for a very high carbon/iridium-ratio in the Tunguska impactor" ( METEORITICS & PLANETARY SCIENCE, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 891-895 (1999)).
But their results on composition of the "Tunguska spacebody" are so unusual (if not strange), that it produced some argue by geochemistry's experts: METEORITICS & PLANETARY SCIENCE, v.36, p.999-1006 (2001).

An Italian reseacher Prof. G.Longo also doubts in reality of these chemical anomalies writing in his article 'The Tunguska Event' (Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society, An Interdisciplinary Approach (2007)):

Some papers report that hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions with signatures similar to those of CI and CM carbonaceous chondrites were found in Tunguska peat layers dating from the TE (Kolesnikov et al. 1999, 2003) and that iridium anomalies were also observed (Hou et al. 1998, 2004). Measurements performed in other laboratories have not confirmed these results (Rocchia et al. 1990; Tositti et al. 2006). Moreover, a concentration of microparticles of inferred cosmic origin was found in tree resins dating from the TE (Longo et al. 1994; Serra et al. 1994). Although these data are compatible with the hypothesis of the impact of a cosmic body, they are by no means conclusive and are not sufficient to prove the nature of the TCB. The same can be said about the lacustrine sediments of Cheko Lake (Sacchetti 2001) studied in the framework of the multidisciplinary investigation as carried out by the Italian scientific expedi- tion Tunguska99 (see http://www-th.bo.infn.it/tunguska/) (Amaroli et al. 2000; Pipan et al. 2000; Gasperini et al. 2001; Longo et al. 2001; Longo and Di Martino 2002 and 2003; Longo et al. 2005).

So if even minor geochemical peculiarities possibly were detected in the "impact place" [16], there is no reason to claim them as of 'Tunguska spacebody', because of their composition. The latter one doesn't resemble a chondritic meteorite, neither a comet (as even pristine ice-rich cometary material is supposed to have a chondritic complement of about 50 wt% [18]).

I can add that the deuterium to hydrogen ratio (D/H) in the Tunguska "catastrophic" peat layer is less than in the adjacent ones (and, much less than in ocean water, of course), while the D/H ratio in all 3 researched comets (Halley, Hyakutake, and Hale-Bopp) is on contrary much larger than even in the adjacent peat layers.

Also isotopic ratio for Tunguska epicenter's rare Earth elements (REE) which was measured in the place of the most REE enrichment is the terrestrial one.

Regarding C-14, its data is rather contraversial, but the latest measurements seem to show no significant deviations against background.

And what about to propose that over the epicenter the extraterrestrial substance was dispersed into fine microparticles during the powerful Tunguska explosion and flew away, explaining why there was no fall out? The answer is "hardly". For example, the latest published calculations of the hypothetic Tunguska spacebody's explosion show that a plasma column of the remnants was to strike the ground. And as it is known. in the case of a powerful nuclear explosion significant part of radioactive debris falls out not far from its epicenter. So this scenario (99.999...% of the substance flew accurately far away from the epicenter) looks very unlikely (impossible in reality).
But the problem is even much more deep. Where is enormous quantity of extraterrestial substance, which the hypothetic Tunguska body was to lose before its explosion? Indeed, according to practically all calculations, the hypothetic Tunguska spacebody was to loose a significant (probably even dominated) portion of its mass before it reached the explosion altitude of 5-8 km. In other words, at least, a hundred thousands tonns of extraterrestrial substance (from large fragments to dust) would be deposited along the lower part of Tunguska spacebody trajectory. Despite many years of careful search nothing was discovered... By the way, a couple years ago application of just one of the many Tunguska substance search's methods allowed easily find small fragments of a meteorite (with initial mass of several tonns, probably), which disintegrated over another place in Siberia in 1904...

The absence of discernable nitrate excess (produced by the "Tunguska meteoroid" during its descent) is also a problem for the meteorite interpretation [18].

There is also some interesting ice-core data relating the year 1908. Here is from http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009arXiv0907.1067M

Title: Cometary airbursts and atmospheric chemistry: Tunguska and a candidate Younger Dryas event
Authors: Melott, Adrian L.; Thomas, Brian C.; Dreschhoff, Gisela; Johnson, Carey K.
Publication: eprint arXiv:0907.1067
Publication Date: 07/2009
...
Abstract

We estimate atmospheric chemistry changes from ionization for the 1908 Tunguska airburst event, finding agreement with nitrate enhancement in GISP2H and GISP2 ice cores, noting an unexplained accompanying ammonium spike. We then consider the candidate cometary impact at the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD). The estimated NOx production and O3 depletion are large, beyond accurate extrapolation, but the ice core peak is lower than predicted, possibly because of insufficient sampling resolution. Ammonium has been attributed to biomass burning, with a coincident nitrate spike found at YD onset in both GRIP and GISP2 ice cores. A similar result is well-resolved in Tunguska ice core data, but that forest fire was far too small to account for this. Direct input of ammonia from a comet into the atmosphere is adequate to explain ice core data at the YD event, but not Tunguska data. An analog of the Haber process with hydrogen contributed by cometary or surface water, atmospheric nitrogen, high temperatures, pressures, and the possible presence of catalytic iron from a comet could in principle produce ammonia, accounting for the peaks in both sets of ice core data.

For more you could read the whole article from the link above.
Here are my comments of the article.

- Authors accepted the speed of the Tunguska spacebody about 30 km/s. At such speed the spacebody unlikely to penetrate to low altitudes ~ 6 km unless it was exceptionally strong. But then it couldn't have been a comet!
- There is an interesting fragment in the article:

... Using high-resolution GISP2H ice core data from the CODIAC archive at NCAR/EOL (Dreschhoff and Zeller, 1994; Dreschhoff, 2002) we find the enhancement over background in nitrate deposition for Tunguska. We first sum nitrate measurements at samples 2225-2227 (the associated peak) and then subtract background, which we assume is given by an average of 5 measurements preceding and following the three peak values. We find the net peak enhancement of 165 ppb. This is converted to a surface density by multiplying by the density and thickness of the ice/firn (600 kg m-3) giving 1.49 x 10-6 kg m-2.

To compute an equivalent value from the simulation results, we sum the rate at the 75 degree North latitude band over 90 days following the event, which gives a net peak enhancement value of about 1.50 x 10-6 kg m-2, in good agreement with the ice core result.
...

Anyway even such 'loose' approach failed to fit the data with ammonium, so the authors wrote:

Thus, all three candidate processes fail to explain the atmospheric chemistry record for the recent, and best understood, Tunguska event.

The Haber process for ammonia synthesis was developed for fertilizer and munitions during World War I. Under conditions of high temperature and pressure, atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen (cometary ice) react to form ammonia.

The assumed mass of ice in the Tunguska comet is insufficient to synthesize sufficient ammonia to account for the ammonium ion in Greenland ice cores. However, it appears that at least one fragment impacted a swampy, partially melted permafrost area, the present site of Lake Cheko (Gasperini et al., 2008). Based on the size of the probable impact crater lake, sufficient water would have been present as a reactant to synthesize the ammonia.

And finally, one more interesting fact. Chemically robust carbon particles (probably diamonds) were found near the epicenter [21,22]. Their composition leads to the conclusion of their terrestrial origin [21,22].
Here is a the from [22] (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995Metic..30S.521H ):

Title: Chemically Robust Carbon Particles in Peat from the Tunguska Impact Site
Authors: Hough, R. M.; Gilmour, I.; Newton, J.; Arden, J.; Pillinger, C. T.
...
Publication: Meteoritics, vol. 30, no. 5, page 521
Publication Date: 09/1995
...
Abstract

The Tunguska impact event of 1908 caused the destruction of a large forested area but left no impact crater. It was interpreted to have exploded in mid-air and thus would disperse material in a fireball over a wide geographical area. Several attempts have been made to locate particles associated with the impact in materials such as tree resin (1) and even in Antarctic snow (2). One of us (JN) attended an expedition to the Tunguska impact area and collected samples of peat from a depth of 60 cm which is thought to be the level in the peat which holds the impact horizon and indeed contains charred vegetation. The peat was subjected to standard demineralization procedures using mineral and oxidizing acids to destroy all but the most resistant mineral phases. An emphasis was placed on the chromic acid treatment to remove organic carbon as the peat was inevitably of extremely high organic content but perchloric acid was also used to oxidize graphite. The residue after treatment has subsequently been examined using a scanning electron microscope (Jeol JSM-820I at 30kv) with a Kevex system to obtain an energy dispersion scan and subjected to stepped combustion to determine the carbon abundance and isotopic composition. The SEM revealed the predominance in the residue of chromium containing phases possibly as a result of the extensive chromic acid treatments but several very pure carbon-rich particles were also observed. These carbon particles were anhedral and up to 15 micrometers in size. Due to the nature of the acid treatment performed upon this sample only a very robust form of carbon could survive and the most likely mineral is diamond. Further analyses using a transmission electron microscope and selected are electron diffraction will be performed to resolve the true mineralogy of these carbon particles. Stepped heating experiments on the acid resistant residue in conjunction with static mass spectrometry (3) has been used to give both carbon and nitrogen contents as well as carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions. Carbon accounted for 0.6% by weight of the residue and was released between 550-650 degrees C with a delta^(13)C of -25 per mil. The nitrogen yield was 0.02% by weight of nitrogen released between 500-700 degrees C with a delta^(15)N of ca. 0 per mil. These represent terrestrial values and indicate that the carbon particles do not have an extraterrestrial signature. If indeed these carbon particles are diamond and related to the explosion of the Tunguska object then they may well have formed by a plasma process within the fireball (similar to CVD). Further refinements regarding the purification of acid resistant materials are in progress. References: [1] Ceccini S. et al. (1995) in Abstracts Presented to ESF Network on Impacts Meeting, Ancona, Italy, May 12-17, 1995. [2] Roccia R. et al. (1990) GSA Spec. Pap. 247, 189. [3] Wright I. P. and Pillinger C. T. (1989) USGS Bull., 1890, 9.

For more on the geochemical anomalies - see pos. 3.10.

2.6. THE BIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

Trees of the second post-explosion generation exhibited higher than normal growth rates in the woodland area devastated by the explosion [23]. In recent decades, the boundaries of the high growth rate zone were "drawing in" toward the eastern "trajectory". Here the frequency of genetic mutations among the young pine trees has increased 12-fold. Till now the meteorite interpretation doesn't explain it.

2.7. THE SKY GLOW

The unusual glow in the sky was first observed days before the event [23]. Beginning on June 23, 1908, atmospheric optical amonalies were observed in many places of Western Europe, the European part of Russia and Western Siberia. They gradually increased in intensity until June 29 and then reached a peak in the early morning of July 1st. These anomalies included an unprecedentedly active formation of mesospheric (noctilucent) clouds, bright "volcanic" twilights, disturbances in the normal motion of the Arago and Babinet neutral points, a possible increase in the emission of the night sky, and unprecedentedly intense and long solar halos. Later on, after July 1, these effects decreased exponentially [23]. The area involved in these phenomena was limited by the Yenisey river in the East, by the Tashkent - Stavropol - Sevastopol - Bordeaux line in the South, and by the Atlantic coast in the West [23].

Here the display ranged over four nights, for on June 29 the sky was very light, and stars and Milky Way extremely faint, but clouds were very prevalent. On July 2 some attractive, coloured-cloud scenery was presented in the north- west and north, but the sky had not the bright, weird aspect it wore on preceding nights, and after midnight I saw nothing unusual.

It's very hard (practically impossible) to explain it even by the comet dust, because:

a) Nobody saw the comet. If it even existed it must be very small. When the Earth crossed a trail of the large spectacular Halley comet in 1910, it produced a weak (if any) effect.

b) For a few days the trail must cover all the Earth around. But the glow was localized in the Europe and the west Siberia in general. Moreover, there were no any reports of the glow in the event region, while the hypothesized cometary coma must be the most dense near its nucleous, i.e. affect the impact region the most.

c) Comet dust must stay in the atmosphere for many weeks, while 'light nights' disappeared in a few days.

d) The enormous quantity of extraterrestrial dust (to produce the prominent sunlight scatter) must strongly influence on the atmospheric absorption. But no unusually large absorption in the atmosphere was detected on the days of the glow (see section 3.12).

e) The sky glow was also observed at rather low latitudes, where it couldn't be originated by the scattering of the sunlight by the dust at night.

It is just a small part of the meteorite interpretation problems. The supporters of the meteorite interpretation usually try to ignore them. For example, when you are talking about the incompatibility between eyewitness's accounts and the meteorite interpretation, they use to say that the eyewitnesses often confuse and so on. But on the other side, the whole idea about the meteorite is based just on the eyewitness's accounts about flying fiery body!

2.8. COMPARASION WITH THE 2013 CHELYABINSK METEORITE

As the Tunguska energy according to 'the best calculations' ( https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/asteroid.html ) was about 3-5 Mt (i.e. just 6-10 times greater) then it is a good reason to compare.

Here are several points.

1) The 2013 Chelyabinsk was a 'classical' large bolide with no Tunguska-like anomalies, no earthshaking preceeding the bolide etc.
Nothing like 'two giant fiery circles which persisted for 4 minutes' as in very reliable report from Kezhma in Tunguska.

2) In Irkutsk (almost 1000 km away from the Tunguska epicenter) after Tunguska a geomagnetic disturbance was registered which lasted for several hours.
In the 2013 Chelyabinsk modern geomagnetic detectors measured nothing similar despite being several times closer to the event.

3) The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteoroid main body disintegrated at altutudes about 30 km. The hypothetical Tunguska meteoroid disintegrated just at 5-10 km altitude (as advocates of the Tunguska meteorite theory say) so it had to be much stronger. So what did it consist of? Iron?... :)

4) There is nothing similar to the famous Tunguska 'bright nights' in association with the 2013 Chelyabink. It looks like some noctilucent clouds were seen IN A WEEK after the 2013 Chelyabinsk event over Europe (which doesnot contradict to the meteorite theory) but in Tunguska the glow phenomena appeared SIMULTANEOUSLY with the event and in a weaker form even PRECEEDED the event and then fastly disappeared in a few days.

5) In the 2013 Chelyabinsk event seismic phenomena reported by witnesses were concentrated within several dozens km from its 'explosion place' (this was caused by a shock wave hitting the ground some dozens seconds after the bolide pass - quite in agreement with a meteorite theory), while the bolide was seen at distances up to ~700 km.
In Tunguska while the VARIOUS luminous phenomena were reported up to about similar distance, but RELIABLE reports on seismic effects were reported at distances larger than 1000 km! (see this www-page nearby) which the meteorite theory can't explain (and this hints that there were several sources of seismic waves in the region).
The manifestation of the seismic effects even BEFORE appearence of the 'Tunguska bolide' is also a problem for a meteorite theory.

6) THE SUBSTANCE. There is a lot of reports of finding the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteorite substance. The reported meteorite fragments vary from 'pea'-sized to more than 600 kg piece. In December of 2013 a tourist group of 'visually impaired' people(!) discovered 24kg-sized fragment. And what about those fragments which were not openly reported, as the fragments are rather expensive and for many poor local residents they are theasure... According to some initual mass-media reports from the area some people collected small fragments with buckets...
Nobody could demonstate even a single small fragment of Tunguska while fragments of the hypothetical 'Tunguska meteorite' should be concentrated in a rather small area (see Hills, J. G. and Goda, M. P. article: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993AJ....105.1114H ). The area was searched for many decades even with various methods - the outcome was negative.
And much smaller the 2013 Chelyabinsk disintegrated at ~30 km altitude and had a shallow trajectory so 'dispersed' its fragments over large region - a lot of fragments!...

3. THE TECTONIC INTERPRETATION

All above-mentioned facts can be explained on the assumption that the Tunguska event was a terrestrial phenomenon, in which tectonic processes played a very large role. One of their manifestations is well-known - it is rupture and trembling of the ground, i.e. an earthquake. But now let's look at some others.

3.1. LUMINOUS EFFECTS OF TECTONIC ACTIVITY

A surge in tectonic activity may produce various optical effects in the atmosphere: luminous columns, stripes, lightnings, flame, glowing sky, etc. Exploding "meteors" are among them.

Here is from http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc042600.html :

...Rada has dug up a Chronicle of Aleppo (a major and very old city in Syria***) that was written down in 1926 - and the author had talked to an eyewitness of the great earthquake that had hit the city in August of 1822****). (Rada actually said August 1, 1821, but all sources I tracked down on the net say either August 13 or 23, 1822.) And what that witness has to say was really weird. From Rada's 'live' translation I got something like the following scenario:

- The witness was sitting in front of his house during a cool night.
- Suddenly the air got so hot that he couldn't breathe, and that extreme heat lasted for some 20 minutes.
- Then he saw a bright light in the atmosphere that lit the whole ground like sunshine. He describes the light like as if a "chamber had opened in the sky."
- Next he heard a sort of great noise like thunder, and
- the air started to move left and right.
- Four shocks lifted him and others out of their seats, and they were fearing for their lives, as if the sky would be falling.
- And then buildings all around them started to collapse, less than 30 seconds after the bright light had appeared, with the earthquake and its aftershocks lasting for 40 days.

Here is how the onset of an earthquake at the Russian town of Kola began on February 21, 1873. The weather was calm. Suddenly it became dark and then an enormous fireball of a dark crimson color appeared in the eastern sky and vanished in the west. At this time underground jolt occurred and the earthquake began which lasted for 5 minutes. It was so strong that the houses swung and utensils fell.

Another interesting example. The "meteor" flew at low altitude in a blast of wind over the Russian town of Chembar past midnight on January 4, 1886, exploding on the road out of the town with loud thunderclap. This explosion killed a horse. Later the survived driver (coachman) just could tell that fiery serpent came flying and killed the horse. About 15 minutes after the explosion an earthquake struck the town.

These exploding fireballs happen in connection with many earthquakes. Some of them are mentioned in [24]. Here is an example.

During the earthquake in the Tama Hills, Japan June 17, 1931 "a fireball rose in the sky and disappeared. A sound like "Bah..." was heard. The lower sky was coloured pink-red for some time after the disappearance of the light".

The author thinks that everybody who are well aware of the eyewitness accounts near the Tunguska epicenter marks the similarity between these phenomena.

And one more very important observation proving that such luminous phenomena can be something more than just simple "lights". During the South Hyuga, Japan earthquake November 2, 1931 [24] a fishing boat called the "Ikedamaru" was engaged in fishing on the sea about 50 km off Utiumi, a town on the coast of Hyuganada. Near the time of the earthquake the boat began to pitch so heavily all of a sudden that the crew thought she was near being capsized. At the same time, to the crew's consternation, a large pillar of fire shot up from the surface of the sea near the boat.

During Matsushiro moderate earthquake's swarm in mid-1960s earthquake lights were pictured the first times. Below is a photo of stable glow (which lasted for 96 seconds) taken Sept.26, 1966 (from J.S.Derr: Earthquake Lights...// Bull. Seism. Soc. Amer., 1973, v.63, p.2177).

On April 22, 1974 immediately before the earthquake hit Kiangsu province in China, people saw a bright streak of light in the sky. Sparkling and glittering with the "lightnings" dancing across it, it proceeded from southwest to northeast. The spectacle went on for some 3-4 seconds. In another Chinese province, Liaoning, fiery columns and balls flashed up in the sky on February 4, 1975, and a "flame" shot up toward the sky at the time of the earthquake. The precursors of the Tangshang earthquake in the Chinese province of Hopeh on July 28, 1976, were revealing in a way. About a half hour before the disaster, a bright flickering light was spotted in the distance. Instantly it was transformed from red to silvery blue, and then lengthened into a blinding white strip that darted across the sky and went out immediately. The eyewitnesses had the impression of a nuclear explosion. At the time of the earthquake an engine driver saw a lightning in the form of 3 blinding light beams, which were followed by 3 mushroom-shaped smoke columns.

A very interesting luminous phenomenon was seen a night before aftershock M=5 of the 27 May, 1976 Lungling earthquake (China) [25]. Two Chinese seismologists observed a fireball about 50 metres in diameter 200 meters away. They watched the fireball for almost half an hour. Next morning at the fireball's site they found "an extensive remnant of a sand boil" [25]. Why not the Muong Nong type tektites production on mini-scale?

A great number of luminous phenomena was seen before the Sungpan-Pingwu (China) earthquake, August 1976 [25]. Columns, fans, balls and sheets were seen. Several Chinese seismologists observed on the evening July 21 a small fireball, which originated at the ground surface about 100 meters from where they stood. At first, it was about 1 meter in diameter. It then shot up to a height of 10 or 15 meters, whereupon the volume started shrinking, finally to ping-pong-ball size. After reaching the maximum height, the ball curved over in an arcuate trajectory, resembling a meteor and disappeared as it fell to the earth. The light would dim, then brighten again. Small wisps of white smoke swirled around the light, and a slight crackling sound was heard. A radio compass and telluric currents were unaffected. A small fuunnel-shaped hole in the ground was found at the place where the fireball appeared. In another case, a fireball started near a house, rose up along an arbor, and burned a hole in the roof of the house. A total of about 1000 fireballs were sighted, 50 in one evening. Chinese seismologists discovered that more fireballs occurred along intersections of river beds and faults [25].

In connection with the swarm of earthquakes in Quebec, Canada 1988-1989 a lot of luminous phenomena were sighted: sparklings, dawn-like diffuse glow, aurora-like bands [26]. Fireballs a few meters in diameter often popped out of the ground in a repetitive manner at distances of up to only a few meters away from the observers. Others were seen several hundred meters up in the sky, stationary or moving. Some observers described dripping luminous droplets, rapidly disappearing a few meters under the stationary fireballs [26].

A very important results on the earthquake lights were recently obtained in relation with the 1995 Kobe earthquake. The investigation of the place where during the earthquake several "streaks of bluish-white color spread out for about a second" (for details see "Geophysical Research Letters v.25, p.2721 (1998)) revealed the traces of 1000 A electric current through the area of about 1000 sq. cm. (Dr. Y. Enomoto, personal communication (1998)).

Very interesting pictures of earthquakes lights and "their" burnt rocks preceding the 1999 Turkish earthquake can be seen here).

It is important also to add that there are some signs of a relation between regional lightning and shallow earthquakes (see "Geophysical Journal International" v.131, p.485 (1997)). Remarkably, that during 19th century an idea was popular that earthquakes are of electric origin!

In general "tectonic lights" could be "meteors", pillars, rays, shooting up flame (usually in an epicenter), semispheres, fireball, patches and bands (in the sky and on the ground), all-sky luminosity, flashes, "auroras", sparks, "clouds", black objects and many others. They have some tendency to move towards an epicenter of an earthquake. Also, please, pay attention, that sometimes earthquake lights accompanied very weak earthquakes.

3.2. MAIN FEATURES OF GEOMETEORS

As we saw, many of these "lights" display energy release, sometimes explosion-like character. Usually these events happen in connection (prior, at the time or after) with earthquakes. But sometimes (see below) the accompanied earthquakes are very weak and an energy release by explosive event exceeds an earthquake one. Also as they often look like an explosion of a flying luminous body, they also can be called as a geometeor).

Indeed, more and more data appears showing that geophysical medium (at first, soil, rock) is a complicated nonlinear active system possessing its own "memory". Such a medium is to be characterized by self-organizing and self-adjusting processes in it. Possibly that geometeors are just one of the way of such self-organization [27]. Remarkably, that atmospheric processes play an important role in geometeors, i.e. probably geometeors is self-organization in/between two geospheres: solid Earth and atmosphere (and maybe outer space medium too?).
The author inclines to think about a possible role of water vapour.

It is remarkable that geometeors (as well as luminous phenomena in general) rather often occur at certain places and very seldom in others (it seems that such geometeors-areas often don't coincide with areas of increased seismicity, but lie close to them).

Till now we don't know their physical mechanism. The author doubts that it could be explained just by electromagnetism, at least by known forms. Probably we must add something. Maybe just this self-organization? Probably research on a 'classical' (associated with weather) ball-lightning could help. The author have an impression that they are just "the top of an iceberg" (one of the most clear manifestations) of some universal fundamental process (of self-organization?)[27,28].

In typical cases geometers looks like an appearence of luminous body (sometimes it could be dark and probably even invisible) which travels to some site (or originate at the site). Then it could explode.

Unfortunately, a number of known high-energy geometeor, which aren't connected with large earthquakes a rather small, so features of geometeors are not well-known (for the latest development see my geophysical meteors article). Anyway, two properties are rather well-established already:

Geometeors often resemble (look like) explosions of ball lightnings. So in many cases we could say that it was the explosion of the ball lightning endogenic (tectonic) origin (if there is a clear role of tectonic activity). Who knows, maybe geometeors could help better understand when and where better try to create artificial ball lightning in a laboratory?

When geometeors have a form of a high-speed ball-lightnings, they often resemble meteoroidal meteors (and confused with the latter ones).

In any case, geometeors exist, and could explain some famous hard-to-explain events.

3.3. EXAMPLES OF GEOMETEORS

Below are several geometeors(geophysical meteors) examples. More of them are in my geophysical meteors article.

On March 29, at 4 a.m. (i.e. about midnight UT) the eyewitness suddenly felt a headache. He turned to the window, saw a flash of light, and heard "a clap". A formation in the form of straw-white-colored cylinder rose above the forest and flew into clouds. The air over the forest was filled with a smoke, and then it rained.

In the autumn a forest fall 30 m by 25 m size was found in a marshy area. The trees were uprooted there with its tops away the epicenter, forming a spiral with two branches. The rind of some trees was burned forming vertical stripes. The roots of trees were burned in a form of concentric bands. A part of the roots was charred from above and sometimes under rind (which, however, remained unaltered). The outer part of the spiral was characterized not only by burning trees, but also by concentric scorched circles around the standing trees.

Meteorological situation was favorable for this geophysical event. Detailed look at the cloudiness's development reveals one more remarkable feature: there was a spike in the cloudiness level right after the event (compare smoothed cloudiness's data averaged for the following time intervals: March 28, 18-24 UT, and March 29, 0-6 UT).

The extraordinary sequence of events made leading news items that evening and the following day. At first it was proposed that a giant meteorite fell in UK near Arthur's Table. But the following research didn't find any traces of the fall. Quietly, the item slipped from the news as it became apparent that the experts would be unable to find an explanation.

In [29] it is also mentioned that Arthur's Table is on Bala fault. The author discovered in [30] this earthquake. Its origin time was 20.38 UT and the position 52.7 N; 3.7 W. The depth was 33 km (i.e. uncertain) or 0 km. Totally it was recorded by 29 seismostations. One seismostation recorded dilatational first motion of seismic wave (i.e. motion toward epicenter), while a meteorite fall could produce only compressional (i.e. motion away from the epicenter) one.

Since that time several earthquakes were detected in the area.
Cloudiness level increased on the next day (compare smoothed cloudiness data averaged for time intervals January 23, 18-24 UT, and January 24, 18-24 UT).

In 2006 an interesting article was published regarding details of the earthquake:
https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/47/5/5.11/231627
and the following discussion:
https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/47/6/6.8/233902
https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/47/6/6.8/233935
https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/48/1/1.6/221585
https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/48/1/1.6/221625

Here is also a wiki-article on the matter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Mountain_UFO_incident
And more:
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/berwyn-mountains-ufo-crash-40-6554715
https://www.ufoinsight.com/berwyn-mountain-incident-earthquake-wasnt/

It was first described as an unidentified atmospheric explosion and sounded similar to the booms that have been heard in those years along the coast of Nova Scotia and New England.

It was a fairly fine day with just a light snow falling on Bell Island. A little bit later 11 a.m. local time a local resident saw a straight beam of white light coming down from the sky at a 45 degree angle to the ground. The glow was not strong, accompanied with a low noise and there was a strong thunderclap at the end of it. The thunderclap was heard more than 100 km away.

One witness said she heard 3 blasts and the ground shook with each blast. Another witness said that he heard another weaker blast a few hours after. The electric power in the houses went out just before the first explosion.

People on the mainland shore of Conception Bay reported seeing fireballs coming down out of the sky and hitting Bell Island. Four miles from Bell Island across open water, said there were streaks of super bright silvery bright light.

In result of the event one house was damaged, especially its electric devices. Nearby a small shed and electric transformer were struck also. Further away a barn with attached henhouse were damaged. The henhouse was virtually destroyed, a wall smashed in and the roof torn off. Five hens were killed. Nearby 3 circular holes in the snow appeared, under the branches of a thin lir tree, which was scorched black about 5 feet high. A couple of other trees were also slightly scorched. The holes formed a triangle. The biggest hole was 4 feet deep and 3 feet wide. Fused material was present at bottoms of the holes.

All over Bell Island there was a momentary loss of electric power during the event, which soon has recovered, with the exception of a few houses in the vicinity of the incident.

Initially 2 main interpretations (a lightning strike and a meteorite fall) were put forward. At first local meteorologists confirmed that there was no thunderstorm activity in that area at the time, but it was snowing. But later the meteorologists have concluded that atmospheric conditions were in fact of a "thunderstorm nature" (to tell the truth, the author doesn't know what does it mean), so the idea about very powerful lightning (probably a ball lightning) became more popular, as no meteorite traces were discovered.

Remarkably that Bell Island contains one of the richest iron ore bodies in the world.

At 19.55 local time (09.55 UT) a red fireball was seen over the town of Dal`negorsk (appr. 44.5 N; 135.5 E), Russian Far East. It flew silently parallel to the ground surface with the speed of 15 m/s leaving no wake neither trail. After the fireball have passed the town, it 'dived' to the slope of the small mountain (the height 611m), then jumped up and down 6 times above the mountain surface. It was accompanied with a very bright light persisted for an hour. One eyewitness said that after it, the fireball took off and flew away.

The 'impact' site was researched 2 days after. The fireball destroyed about 2-3 cub. m of the rock. The site was covered with singed pieces of the rock with small metallic spherules sprinkled. At the edge of the site there was a burnt tree-stump.

Acording to some researchers even in 1989 a strange 'field' existed in the site. Living organisms avoided the site. It negatively influenced on human health. Radio-electronic devices and photo-cameras used to malfunction in the site. For example, the photo-images often were absent while taken at the site, and when taken outside the site they were of good quality. Of course such important statements are needed to be verified.

Three main types of remnants were found at the site. Pb-spherules (about 60 g.), Fe-spherules (about 15 g.) and 'sponge'.

The Pb-spherules consisted of Pb with a small percentage of other elements like rare-Earth ones. Dimensions - upto 4 mm.

The Fe-spherules were 2-4 mm in diametre and consisted of Fe with C and O and a small percentage of Cr, Co, W. The Fe-spherules were magnetized.

'Sponge' was a glass-like substance covered with a lot of 'holes'. Silicon 'threads' about 17 microns width with a gold 'thread' inside were discovered. The 'sponge' probably was remnants of rocks and the tree-stump in general.

The singed pieces of the rock were dehydrated and enriched in oxides of various metals. The silicon contents was slightly lowered.

The trajectory of the fireball was parallel of 2 faults and the 'impact' site was in the intersection of several faults.

In the evening (20.30 local time) of Febr. 8, 1986 two fireballs were seen near this mountain. They flew around the mountain 4 times and then flew away.

On the evening (about 22.40 local time) of Nov. 28, 1987 totally 32 fireballs flew over the Russian Far East region. Four of them flew over the mountain, three ones were above the town of Dal`negorsk and five ones illuminated environs.

Analysis by Soviet researchers revealed that the 'fireballs' tend to appear above faults and ore deposits during a full Moon.

First I would like to say that in the region some weak earthquakes occur from time to time.

At 23 hours local time (15 UT) a large orange red spherical "fireball" with a very small bluish white conical tail had flown from low down in the south over observers travelling to the north. Some observers reported that the fireball was cylindrical in form and more yellow-blue-white in colour. It was heard as a pulsed roaring or loud diesel engine sound - well before it arrived, it dropped off no glowing fragments, and had no long luminous tail or sparks - as is common meteor activity. Its speed was similar to a 747 jet liner or a fast jet plane.

No sonic booms were reported, and no observer believed that any explosion was heard until the "object" got to ground level - or very nearly so (behind low hills or tree line cover) - and exploded/or impacted.

It flew apparently parallel to the Earth's curvature in a long "nap of the Earth" arcing trajectory at low altitude (some 1-2000 metres ?) from low down on the southern horizon, not with a "normal" meteor inbound high angle high altitude trajectory. The fireball lit up some observers and their vicinity as it passed overhead. It's flight trajectory was observed over a distance of least 250 km. It then appeared to arc down towards the ground and disappeared out of sight behind trees or low hills.

This was followed after a 5-minutes delay by a near blinding massive high energy burst of blue-white light that rippled for about 3-5 seconds. It lit up the night (windless, cloudless, and moonless) sky as if daylight. The energy intensity involved in this light flash was similar to the light flash generated by a significant nuclear blast, and in many respects the incident strongly resembled a night time nuclear test.

A huge red coloured flare then shot vertically skywards for some considerable distance (several kilometres ?), and this was immediately followed by a massive seismic ground wave that hit the observers nearest to "ground zero" such that rocks and beer cans vibrated off of tables and the ground shook violently so that persons tending a camp fire fell over. At the small gold mine (the Alycia Mine) underground 7.5 cm steel pipes sheared clean in half and collapsed underground drives and shafts.

A very loud major explosive blast then followed that was heard over a 250 km by 150 km corridor, minor quake damage was reported as far as 150 km southeast of the "ground zero" - the other directions (excepting Leonora to the southwest) being largely uninhabited.

A large deep red-orange coloured hemisphere of opaque light with a silver outer shell lining then rose from ground level to hover around over the "ground zero location". This structure when fully developed was approximately three times the size of a typical Goldfields setting Moon as seen by observers located 30-50km from it - (i.e. it was very big), and it bobbed around a bit for nearly two hours, before disappearing suddenly.

This "half soup plate structure " (looking like a "deep red very large and half set Sun") was seen by two observers from widely separated locations, one at the Banjawarn station buildings, and one at the Deleta station buildings.

Almost exactly one hour after the first big event three observers (located at the Banjawarn station buildings) also saw a second much smaller fireball - more blue-green-white in colour, which appeared to rise from ground level (?), but which definitely rose from behind distant trees well south of the station perimeter, and flew to the north in a high mortar shell type arc before coming down to ground level, behind distant bush. It's flight path was divergent to the north northeast when compared to that of the first major "fireball" event of that night.

This later event then created a second but very small explosion and concomitant minor ground shake - similar to the first event, but much smaller in size, and with no resultant rising hemisphere of opaque light. This second event does not appear to have been of a magnitude sufficient to register on A.G.S.O. seismographs.

Next morning nothing unusual was seen from the hills nearby.

In 1995 H. Mason spent a considerable time in a airplane, but failed to find any crater or ground anomaly of any kind there or anywhere else in a 300 km diameter search area. Ground and air examination of the nearby Celia fault-lineament could find no evidence of any movement on this structure.

At about the same time H. Mason got a report by the three truckies seeing yet another fireball soon after starting work at 5.00 a.m. (exact date unknown) in May or June of 1993. Their "moon sized" fireball flew from south to north at low level (some 1000 metres) with a high speed jet plane velocity. It was yellow-orange-red in colour and had a very small blue-white tail, and lit up the early morning dark sky in an intense blue white light flash that silhouetted the countryside, as it too headed immediately west of Laverton directly for Banjawarn station. As they were sitting next to loud diesel engines of their own we do not know if this third Banjawarn fireball made any pulsed roaring noise. This third fireball held a course that, would pass over Banjawarn.

As H. Mason have informed the author, the 95% of eyewitnesses of luminous phenomena and seismic effects gave the epicenter at 121 deg 10 min East, 27 deg 05 min South. The distance from the Celia Lineament is 10-15 km on harmonic parallel linear. The rest 5% of eyewitnesses (just seismic effects) and the seismic monitoring network gave the epicenter a several dozens km to the south, right on the Celia Lineament, where it crosses with another fault. It is interesting to note, that the Laverton town water supply pumping station is quite close to the latter epicenter and there was a drought at that time, while several following years there was enormous flooding. In 1994 there were a few reports from the region of the "luminous epicenter" about strange 'explosive' sounds accompanied with minor seismic effects (in the author opinion - brontides, probably). Moreover, two other large orange-red hemisphere static light form structures have also been observed at night northwest of Banjawarn (in 1988 and in October 1992).

H. Mason takes into account 5 possible origin of the event. He admits that is it unknown natural event, but, rejects 'earthquake lights', because, as he writes "of their usually very low energy output". But as he discovered strong correlation of this and other similar events in Australia (see below) with geology (tectonic faults) and earthquakes, he is supposing that the most probable it was the experiment with electromagnetic weapon for inducing earthquakes conducted by Russians or Americans!
P.S. In August 2000 H. Mason e-mailed me asking to underline, that he has in mind several possible origins of similar events, including natural ones.

As the author found in the "Bull. of the Intern. Seismol. Centre", the focus depth of the earthquake was 1 km (according to H. Mason, the quake is calculated as negative in depth i.e. up in the air) and magnitude M=3.6, according to the Australian seismostations. By the way one seismostation recorded compressional first wave motion, while another recorded the dilatational one.

The author also would like to attract attention at the following interesting aspect of the event. A surface explosion of about 500-1000 t TNT produces an earthquake of magnitude 3.6 (and a crater about 200 m in diameter). As no crater were found, it could be proposed that the explosion was aerial (if to ignore the given focal depth of 1 km), but it increases TNT equivalent at several orders of magnitude. But there were no reports or any signs of strongest air-shock waves produced by such powerful explosion (see also below).

The author have many arguments that the event was not such a weapon experiment and, of course, not a 'meteorite', but already known to us geometeor, in some way a "powerful" kind of 'earthquake lights'.

"We do however note that there is no evidence of atmospheric sound waves (a ‘sonic boom’ for instance) visible on the seismic records. Evidence for these waves have been observed on records associated with known meteor sightings."

A bolide was seen (and a sky was very bright) followed by a huge electric discharge and also some seismographic records. The event happened in Poland near Cracow (Babia Skala, Jerzmanowice) on January 14, 1993. A good part of the "Babia Skala" limestone crag was thrown to distances of over 200 m, and the largest piece was of more than 100 kg (80 m apart from the stroke). Sinuous or zigzagging furrows radiating away and bifurcating were carved in the grass-cover soil surface within 50 m from the detachment point on the crag. Electric wiring in the village was melted.

This event was connected with three discharges, which were practically straight-line discharges. The first one was the largest (at 17h 58min 53.9s UT, timing from the seismic records), and proved to be about 17 degrees (+- 10 degrees) inclined to horizon, very shallow. It started at a height of 2.05 km (+-065 km), longitude 19,693 +-0.014 deg, latitude 50.183 +-0.004 deg, and terminated exactly at longitude 19.756 deg, latitude 50.207, height 0.48 km. It was 5.5 +-1.2 km long. The second discharge happened at 18h 00min 16.4s UT and the third one at 18h 01min 43.3s UT.

The author can add that the site of the event is the site where weak small-focus-depth earthquakes happen from time-to-time and a cold front (which was passing the area) is also favourable for 'earthquake lights' activity.

In the clear dawn of January 18, 1994 a bit before 7h 15min UT many people in Santiago de Compostela witnessed a very bright luminous object crossing the sky in a descending trajectory (according to some reports, at a certain point of the trajectory the descent changed to a sharp fall). It was described as a fireball with a small red-orange tail with apparent angular size. A surface crater in Cando (8.864 deg. W, 42.843 deg. N) with dimensions 29 m by 13 m and 1.5 deep was later discovered near the projected "impact" point of the luminous object. At this side, in addition to the topsoil, full-grown pine trees more than 20 meters high were thrown downhill over 90 m away. No meteorites were discovered.

Meteorological conditions were favourable for geometeors. Cloudiness level increased several hours after the event. You can see this in smoothed and averaged cloudiness's data for the following time intervals: January 18 0-6 UT, 6-12 UT, 18-24 UT, and Jan.19 0-6 UT.

The author can add that the site of the event is the site where weak small focus depth earthquakes happen from time-to-time.

In the clear evening of Nov.22, 1996 at the large area of the Western Honduras there were a lot of luminous phenomena, accompanied by sounds and ground trembling. Immediately after the event the Moon became dark and the night became foggy/cloudy. Some people reported smelling sulfur. Also at some places coffee plants faded away, the water became bad, many people became ill, some fissures were discovered on the ground, several landslides took place at about these times.

Here are some examples of the luminous phenomena: very bright fireball followed by loud concussions 2-3 seconds later; the sky split and fire came down; bright diffuse light; string of pearls; a group of stars crossing the sky; a rotating object with curved trajectory; an object moving in zigzag; a red clearness.

A remarkable phenomenon took place in El Progresso town about 8 hours before the event. A small stone fell on the ground. The stone was retrieved from the yard while still warm. It was spinning and de-gassing (with strong smell of sulfur) after digging itself into a small crater. The stone was red-hot, about 4 cm in diameter, and turn black on cooling. After a few days the fragment had disintegrated into gray ash. Approximately 2 minutes before the fall a bright fireball was seen high in the sky. The author would like to attract attention to this phenomenon, because it resembles (in smaller scale) some Evenks accounts of stone falling at the Tunguska times. They resemble the famous (and still unexplained) 1855 Igast episode ( see "Nature" v.209, p.67 (1966)) and some others.

Several international expeditions searched for the meteorites, but no meteorites were discovered.

Besides a connection with the weather change, the author would like to attract attention also to a remarkable coincidence of the event with solar activity. While the solar activity was very low at that period in average, there was a short-term upsurge of it right at the time of the event.

It took place at about 55.4 N, 77.5 N on June 27. The sky turned black, thunders and lightnings struck. Through the clouds came the fireball. It disappeared behind the horizon, then the fireball struck with a loud bang and flash. The hunters were the closest witnesses to the impact of the fireball. When they returned home, a new bay had been carved out of the shoreline. The whole area affected had about a quarter-mile radius. Geologists proposed that it was just a landslide of the shore. But it didn't conform with the debris found 3 miles out on an ice floe, and a bus-sized crater discovered in the water. Moreover, soon reports appeared about fireballs at other dates. For example, a fireball was seen speeding towards the site in the evening June 22. There were also reports of 2 separate tremors at the time. A seismic station 210 km away recorded a disturbance in the evening of June 22. Geologists were stumped by the cause of the tremors, but said weather is probably responsible. In total, fireballs were seen on 4 different days: June 22, 24, 27 and July 4. Some local residents said that similar event took place in years gone by. As usually after large initial interest (a large meteorite fall!), it is now almost forgotten, as many other events, which don't conform popular explanations (a meteorite fall, a landslide, etc).

...To answer some of your questions, observers report seeing a "fireball" on several different dates: June 22, 24, 27 and July 4. It is possible some of these observers are simply confused, but it seems something was observed on at least two different dates, possibly three or four. A "seismic disturbance" was reported at a seismographic station at LG-4, 210 kilometres away, on June 22 between 7:52 and 7:55 p.m. That is consistent with one of the sightings of the fireball -- that by the mayor of Kuujjuarapik, Anthony Ittoshat, during a baseball game. He had reported seeing a fireball in the early evening falling toward the site. However, a group of Inuit hunters who first came across the "crater" reported seeing it several days later for the first time. They had passed by the site on an ATV trail on the Friday, not seeing anything unusual, then again on the Monday, at which time the ATV trail was under water and completely cut off by the new bay.
All witnesses said the "fireball(s)" was/were similar to a shooting star, but quite bright, and falling quickly. The duration: no more than a couple of seconds. It appeared to be falling directly toward the site and disappeared over a hill that is north of the community. Sometime in late June, the community's executive director, David Masty, who was at his camp two kilometres away from the new bay, said he heard a loud, frightening rumbling or crashing sound that lasted a short while (he's dubious as to the source of the sound and is not sure it's linked to the crater's formation).
We ourselves flew up to investigate, and drove out along the ATV (all-terrain vehicle) trail which follows the beach northwards. About 10 km north of this Cree-Inuit village, suddenly the ATV trail comes to the edge of a cliff some 10 metres high and below us there is a wide new bay where before there was beach. We were there about a month after the incident, but the water was still very muddy and brown. The new bay was somewhat of an oval, stretching inland about 350-450 m and 250-300 m across (these dimensions are our estimates). The cliffsides are 5 to 10 m high. More inland, the cliffsides are higher (10 m), and are not sheer but more consist of immense mounds of clay. Dozens, even hundreds, of broken, twisted pine trees lay within the clay and water. One tree looked like it had been ripped apart lengthwise with not many slivers. The tree's rings looked like dowels sticking out perhaps six inches. Various observers noticed that some of the trees on the south-southeast side of the bay (the direction from which the fireball came) were a bronze colour at the very top and there were bronze-coloured acorns scattered all around the ground. We noticed some mussel shells lying on the ground above the cliffside, which is 7 metres high here. The shells were some 7 metres inland from the edge of the cliff.
The first observers on the scene in the days after the bay appeared reported seeing a ring of mud far off the shore surrounding the mouth of the new bay. One party that explored the scene in a canoe bumped into the ridge and had to push itself over it to get toward the bay. When we got there, the mud ridge had mostly eroded, but traces of it remained. Stretching from the mouth of the bay, on both the north and south sides, a ridge of mud extended 20 metres into the water, with some large rocks on top. The ridge was about 2 m wide. On the beach just a few metres south of the new bay, we spotted several unusual items. We saw half a dozen blackened leaves that looked charred but were not dried out; and a tree with the branches completely sheered off on one side.
About 40 metres off the shore, we saw a blackened circle in the water about 40 metres in diametre. It was surrounded by the brown water that filled the new bay and extended off the shore. Some community members who passed over this "black hole" in a canoe measured it with a depthsounder and found it was 33 feet deep. It had the contour of a crater with sides sloping downward.
Michel Bouchard, while convinced that a meteor did not hit the land and that the new bay was caused by a simple landslide, concedes that one may have fallen off the shore at this spot (where the "black hole" is) and the force may have caused a landslide on the shore, causing the new bay. (A small brook enters the new bay on the east, which perhaps contributed to the instability of this part of the shore.) Bouchard told us: "Normally in front of a landslide there is a mass of mud. The puzzling thing for me is the hole out in the bay." But due to budget cutbacks, he is unwilling to send an investigative team to explore the site. He says the local community will have to pay for such an investigation itself.
The community's public safety office, Josie George, told us four men claiming to be from NASA appeared at the site within days of the phenomenon's occurrence and proceeded to the site by helicopter. We contacted NASA and a spokesman denied any knowledge of an investigative team from NASA or its affiliated researchers going to the site...

Geophysical situation was favorable for ball-lightning-like geometeors - "thunders and lightnings"!
Also compare GOES-8 infrared picture of the area taken 12:15 UT, June 27, and 00:15 UT, June 28 i.e. right after the event. A tremendous development of cloud's cover in the area is clearly seen.

For interest, also I have checked meteorological data for another fireball falling towards the place on June 22 (7-8 pm local time). There was some increase of cloudiness too! (compare satellite pictures for June 23 0.15 UT, and 12.15 UT).
So the empirical theory works rather good!

Just an accidental coincidence? Maybe...

And now about what happened. Here is THE DAILY WORLD article (WA, USA) ( http://www.thedailyworld.com/daily/2003/Jul-15-Tue-2003/news/news1.html ) on the item:

Rocks in Elma may be remains of a meteor
By Levi Pulkkinen
Daily World
July 15, 2003

ELMA - Elma High School Senior Brian Reed was bored, just taking a night drive through Elma's dark, deserted streets. Closing on 1 a.m., he, his cousin Scott Reed and fellow Elma Senior Dan Raney hadn't found any more excitement after midnight than before it.
Then, Reed says, a meteor tore open the night sky.
"We were just driving down the road, and I just saw this big, bright flash," the 18 - year - old said. "At first, I thought it was a shooting star or a falling star or something.
"It looked like fireworks, but it had a tail about six or seven - feet long."
Reed said the falling rock appeared to break apart as it approached the earth, exploding before impact.
The young men decided to investigate, and headed from the freeway toward Elma High School, where they believed the fragments struck.
"We went out there and started looking around, and we saw a bunch of divot holes in the sand of the track out there," Reed said. "We looked for a while, then we went and got a couple of cops."
Raney, 17, said he tried to pick up a piece of the still - hot rock and burned his hand.
Soon police joined the young men's investigation, examining the pock - marked asphalt and dinged ground.
Toby Smith, a University of Washington astronomy lecturer and meteorite researcher, said Reed's description of events matches with the stories told by others who have seen falling meteors.
"It sort of has the hallmarks of being a classic meteorite fall," Smith said. "It's actually very rare (to see a meteor strike the earth), but, as the population density grows, we get more people reporting seeing this type of thing.
"These types of meteorite fall are reported about once or twice a year."
After flagging down a Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Deputy, Reed called his mother and contacted the Elma Police Department. Working a graveyard shift, Elma Officer Travis Bealert took the call.
According to Elma Police sources, the officer arrived at the scene to find the young men searching for pieces of rock. After examining the site himself, Bealert apparently continued on his patrol.
Bealert's shift ended early Tuesday and attempts to contact him were unsuccessful.
Though more than 20,000 tons of material strike the earth's atmosphere annually, Smith said nearly all of it burns up before it strikes the ground. Very rarely is material that actually strikes the earth actually seen.
If the Elma meteorites are extraterrestrial, Smith said he believes it may be the first meteor strike witnessed in Washington's history. Six other meteorites have been recovered in Washington.
Smith said a similar strike was witnessed near a Chicago suburb last year.
"These things are seen to happen," he said. "Meteorites are very, very rare things, but a lot of them fall."
The astronomer said meteors passing through the earth's atmosphere usually burn and deform, leaving a dark, glassy skin on the rock.
"It really looks like a burnt crust. That's usually a dead giveaway," Smith said. "If they have the crusts on them, there's a very good possibility that these could be meteorites."
Until the rock has been examined, however, Smith said it is difficult to be certain of its origin.
But, how do three young men of Elma top off their out - of - this - world night? Snacks, of course.
"We went down to the store behind the bowling alley ... and got something to eat," Reed said. "We were still pretty excited."

Apparent Meteorite Lands In Elma High School Lot
ELMA - Talk about something you don't see every day. Police and local astronomers alike are studying what appears to be remnants of a meteorite strike in Elma. Several witnesses e-mailed KOMO 4 News to say they saw a bright greenish-reddish fireball streak across the sky around 1 a.m. Tuesday. Two Elma High School seniors told the Daily World of Aberdeen they saw the fireball streak through the sky, then explode just before it struck the ground near the high school. They rushed to the high school to see what they could find, only to discover several tiny craters filled with the still-hot rocks. Since then, dozens of people have been scouring the field looking for the small rock fragments. Tests will have to be done to prove it was part of a small asteroid or comet but early appearances seem to indicate it was indeed a wayward space rock. The Daily World says it could be the first time a meteor strike has been witnessed in Washington's history.

Apparent Meteorite Lands In Elma High School Lot
July 16, 2003
By Molly Shen

ELMA - There's an out of this world mystery in Grays Harbor County. Three teenage boys saw a fireball plummeting to Earth early Tuesday morning. Now their meteor, or the story of it, is the biggest thing to hit Elma. "I looked over and I saw this bright streak through the sky," says Brian Reed. "It had a tail that was probably six or seven feet long and at the end it was glowing red. It was good size." Brian's cousin Scott Reed also saw it. He says they watched the fireball disappear in the direction of their high school and then saw a cloud of dust go up in the air. "We came down here and looked," explains Scott, "and all there was, was little holes and craters. We just started digging around right there, moving gravel, and we found little pieces that looked different." The boys collected handfuls of tiny black rocks. One was so hot, it burned their friend Dan's thumb and finger. The story of the meteorite crash spread through town, and soon everyone was sifting through the gravel looking for evidence. "I never would've expected an asteroid or meteor would land in Elma," said one young girl. And it's starting to look like one didn't.
Meteorite hunters from the Seattle area came to Elma after hearing the story, and they delivered bad news. "We don't have a sample of it yet," says collector Blake Johnson. "If it stuck to a magnet I'd get pretty excited." "They might be picking up the wrong rocks," adds collector Adam Hupe. "There might be some real meteorites mixed in there. I don't know. We've got to look at every single one." The glassy black rocks could be worn asphalt or pieces of the old high school track. Any promising samples will go to scientists at the University of Washington to see if they're genuine. But even if they're not, imaginations are free to run wild.
"We'll still think that it's awesome," smiles Scott Reed. "We'll still have it in our minds that we started something really big here." And he adds, "I think it was a meteorite."
KOMO 4 News also received a handful of e-mail from other independent viewers saying they too saw the fireball streak across the sky shortly before 1 a.m.

Thursday, July 17, 2003
Elma has gone meteor crazy
By Levi Pulkkinen - Daily World Writer

ELMA - A meteorite is a seductive thing. It draws people towards it, pulls the obsessed to distant corners of the world. Meteorites have drawn brothers Adam and Greg Hupe from their home in Renton to Africa and Europe. Tuesday they were drawn to Elma to examine the rocks three young men found early Tuesday morning after seeing something they believe to be a meteor heading toward the Elma High School athletic fields. Unfortunately for Elma residents who've caught meteorite fever, the Hupe brothers had little good news. "It doesn't look good at this point, but that doesn't mean you won't find something," Adam Hupe told the three young men. Hupe said he will pass the rocks on to University of Washington professor Tony Irving, a former research scientist with the NASA who often works with the brothers, for further testing. He doesn't, however, hold out much hope that the small, black rocks are of extra - terrestrial origin. Speaking with the three might - be witnesses, the Hupes said nothing to the young men to cast doubt on what the teens say they saw, only that the rocks they believed to be meteoritic were not. It was a welcome change for Elma Senior Brian Reed, who said he feels many onlookers believe he and his friends are "full of it." To the critics and cameras, Brian Reed, his cousin Scott Reed and friend Dan Raney could do little but repeat their mantra - "We know what we seen." While driving on Vance Creek Road just after 12 a.m. Tuesday, the three bored teen - agers saw a fireball with a tail streaking out of the sky followed by a flash. It looked like it was headed toward the Elma track and the young men went for a look. Once there, they say they examined the apparently pock - marked shotput pit with a tiny, squeezable flashlight. They found glassy black rocks they thought were space rock. Excited, Brian called his mother, then the police for assistance. Now, it appears those rocks were not out of this world, but the Hupes encouraged the young men and other would - be meteorite hounds to keep searching. The area where the young men grabbed what they thought were meteorites was swarming with children and adults from all over the Harbor. They sifted through the pea - gravel and combed the grass looking for the extraordinary. The brothers showed the searchers sample meteorites from other expeditions, hoping to give locals a better picture of their quarry. It's the same routine they went through last March, when a meteorite came down in Chicago's southside neighborhood. Hours after hearing about the strike, Adam was on a plane on his way to Chicago. A meteorite had smashed through residents' homes, breaking windows and piercing roofs. Once on the lookout, locals started bringing in everything from gravel to large chunks of asphalt. "We went to Chicago and about 90 percent of the rocks people brought to us weren't meteorites," he said. "But once we showed people what real meteorites look like, they started bringing them in. "That's what we're here for, to show people what to look for."
Greg Hupe said he and his brother do similar "show - and - tell" demonstrations when they travel to Saharan Africa, training nomadic Bedouin to search for the world's oldest rocks. Dan Raney said the Hupes impressed him a great deal.
"Those guys are cool," Elma Senior Dan Raney said. "They're just awesome, really laid back." After spending hours talking about treasure hunting with them, the Hupe brothers gave the three young men small meteorites. Their cores sparked with elemental iron, the matte black rocks have a strangeness about them. Taking the thumb - size meteorites, the young men carefully pocket them only a little less entranced than when they saw what they saw two nights before.

[meteorite-list] Elma Status?

Adam Hupe adamhupe at comcast.net
Wed Aug 6 17:22:56 EDT 2003
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Hi Mike, Mike and List,

The Elma material is definitely not a meteorite, so to speak.  It could
prove to be just as or more interesting to the scientific community.  The
jury is still out on exactly what this material is or how it was created.
The initial lab results created more questions than answers. As has been
reported this material consist of sand incased in a basaltic glass shell.
The materials in the glass are not separated into swirls so what ever
created these objects had a huge amount of energy and the glass was quenched
very rapidly. Experiments are being conducted to see how these might have
been created.  We should have more answers by next week.  This is looking
more like an X-files episode than a meteor sighting.  For now, we are
keeping an open mind regarding this material.

All the best,

Adam and Greg Hupe

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[meteorite-list] Elma Status?

Adam Hupe adamhupe at comcast.net
Wed Aug 6 19:08:43 EDT 2003
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Hi Tom and List,

The problem with this material is that it does not contain any metal.  If it
was in a reducing environment why isn't there any metal, even at microprobe
levels?  This almost certainly eliminates this material coming from an
industrial process, at least none that I have ever heard of.  If it came
from a foundry why wasn't the sand melted in the center.  The sand is also
trapped in sealed vesicles, that look almost like chondrules, like a
condensation product, which is extremely odd.  It was extremely difficult to
make thin-sections of this stuff because of the friability of the material
trapped inside.

Will update as we get more results,

Adam


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom aka James Knudson" <knudson911 at frontiernet.net>
To: "mafer" <mafer at imagineopals.com>; "Adam Hupe" <adamhupe at comcast.net>
Cc: "meteor central" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 3:39 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Elma Status?


> Hello All, This Elma stuff sounds like a metal casting bi-product from a
> foundry. Is there a foundry in our around Elma?
> Thanks, Tom
> Peregrineflier <><
> The proudest member of the IMCA 6168

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[meteorite-list] Yet another Elma Material update

Adam Hupe adamhupe at comcast.net
Sat Aug 16 02:43:44 EDT 2003
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Dear List Members,

This email was sent and I felt it deserved to be responded to publicly
because I have received numerous other emails asking similar questions.  If
you are not interested in the latest Elma material results please hit your
delete button now.

**************************************************
I was wondering if you would mind updating me on what you have
found out about the Elma object. I did not want to post this to the list
because the subject seems to bring out the worst in SOME people, and I
don't really want to invoke another word war. In any case, I would keep
anything you say confidential until you decide to tell the rest of the
community about it if you wish.
**************************************************

First of all, I went back to Elma for some answers to several questions.
Some of the things that I did was to collect samples from the supplier of
the original sinter track material and to track down the source of  the sand
found in the shot-put pit.

The sand in the shot-put pit came from a quarry about a quarter of a mile
away.  It was determined that the sand is natural, clean and that the glassy
objects were introduced sometime later.

Since sinters could be a possible explanation we decided it would be proper
to compare them with what was found in the pit.  The sinters are left over
material from burning coal in a steam plant.  The sinters in the original
track have been covered for over a decade by a layer of asphalt and a
covering of rubber.  Since it was thought that these glassy objects might
have been contamination from the original track it was important to locate
the source of these sinters for comparison.  Here is the problem, coal
varies from one burn to the next which means there will be some variance in
the sinters.  All I can say is that the sinters that were tested at the UW
did not match the glassy objects found in the pit.  The UW will release a
public opinion, I believe, on the results tomorrow.

Things that we have no explanation for:

A dust cloud was observed from the pit within seconds of seeing the
fireball.

An eyewitnesses finger and thumb were burned after picking up a piece.

A piece of this glass was found by a police officer embedded in a telephone
pole next to the pit.

The same police officer reported that there were dents and burn marks on
some nearby bleachers.

The same officer reported that where these black objects were found on an
asphalt sidewalk that there was melting.

A newspaper photographer took a picture of hundreds of little craters in the
sand, each containing these black glass objects at the bottom.

Sand which was not melted was found in the centers of most of these objects
which consist of basaltic glass that was quenched very rapidly, kind of like
a fulgurite.

The track coach claims the sand was clean prior to this event and sinters
would never have been added.

A few institutions have weighed in on this event.  One DOD contractor thinks
it could have been a transient event (a plasma discharge) which they
sporadically pick up on their sensors when monitoring for nuclear activity
from time to time.  A Russian scientist is convinced that it might have been
a Geometeorite event (ball lightning).  I think that the UW will report that
yet more study needs to be done in order to connect this strange glass to
the meteor sighting which was witnessed by several dozen people.

I will post microprobe pictures and data when the UW gives me the green
light.

All the best,

Adam

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4/23/04

 Dear List,

 The Elma event was very interesting from an investigative standpoint. For us, it was more like investigating an X-File scene than a meteorite fall. Dozens of witnesses came forward including officer Bealert who also saw the light show and later investigated the suspected impact site. There is no doubt that an event resembling a meteor was observed that night. The thing in question is whether the material found behind the school in the shot-put pit is meteoritic or not. We have stated from the beginning that the recovered glassy objects were not meteorites.

 Another theory arose soon after the material was determined not to be meteoritic. Russian researcher Dr. A. Ol'khovatov stated the conditions were perfect for a transient event and witness statements could be explained by such an occurrence. He went as far as documenting the event on his web-site calling it a probable a "Geometeorite". His interpretation can be found by sifting through a huge amount of data on the web-site below:

http://olkhov.narod.ru/gr1997.htm

 Sandia National Laboratories has a division that investigates transient events and also believes the witness statements are consistent. They have inquired a few times and take these kinds of reports seriously. From what we were lead to believe they have the ability to track such events from remote sensing equipment.

 The University of Washington analyzed the material and found in simple terms glass surrounding unmelted sand, kind of like a reverse fulgurate. We found the company who supplied the sand and investigated. The glassy objects had to have been introduced into the sand at a latter time than when supplied. It was suggested that sinters from the original nearby running track may have contaminated the shot-put pit. This seemed impossible because the running track had been rubberized over a decade ago and there were no glass objects found between the track and the pit. The source of the sinters was tracked down to a power generation plant. Samples were brought back and analyzed. The problem was the sinters were highly variable but none were found with unmelted sandy cores. They were somewhat similar leading the University of Washington to conclude they were probably the most likely answer to the puzzle.

 An interesting item is that Robert Haag investigated a similar event as noted at the site below:

http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/nrock03.htm

 In conclusion two labs are leaning towards a transient event and one against. We will continue to keep an open mind but do not have much spare time to investigate anything other than true meteorites.

 All the best,

 Adam and Greg Hupe
 The Hupe Collection
 Team LunarRock
 IMCA 2185

1) The fireball was extraterrestrial/meteoroidal origin, which flew away, and the remnants discovered have nothing to do with the fireball (they were accidental artefacts of some industrial/human activity, etc.).
This interpretation has several large problems:
a) What kind of the alleged acitivity could produce the numerous hot rocks spread in the area?
b) As the small rocks were so hot that they even burnt skin, so the alleged activity must seized immediatedly before the event, which occured after local midnight.
c)As I know, some rocks hit a set of aluminum bleachers and made small dents. Other rocks hit the asphalt walkway and melted. And one even was embedded into a telephone pole.
I can not imagine any possible industrial/human activity, which could explain this - and what about you?

2)It was a hoax. It is "the last chance" explanation, which is often being put forward, when there are problems with other explanations. In the Elma event, taking into account the above-mentioned, I can not imagine, how great number of people must be involved. I consider this very unlikely. Anyway, if anybody has any real evidences of the "plot", he must state them, otherwise, the "hoax-explanation" is not worth to consider.

3) It was a geometeor. Or in other words - a large ball-lightning like object (which I prefer to call a "geophysical meteor" or "geometeor"). Also if the discovered "remnants" weren't of local origin, so it is possible that they were carried by the geometeor. In the latter case we could call it as "geometeorite" (see also below).
Just a few remarks supporting the idea:
- The largest confirmed case (a photo) of a ball-lightning was about 100 meters in diameter.
- During the January 18, 1994 Spanish geophysical bolide (see above), which was surely non-meteoroidal, its altitude was as high as at least 25 km, and its speed was several km/s.
- Ball-lightnings are known sometimes to divide into several parts.
- Currently the origin of the deposited "remnants" is not known. They could be of local origin or from somewhere outside. Anyway, a possibility of a ball-lightning depositing some substance was confirmed in field search by outstanding French astronomer Camille Flammarion (after whom a Moon crater was named). And here is a link to an article where a ball-lightning deposited red-hot metallic (small) balls: https://www.fundamental-research.ru/ru/article/view?id=6143

Here we are a little beyond our modern science frontiers. Just a few cases of such events are documented in published scientific literature (but many more in this www-page), so a scientist must has some brevity to talk about this, as a conservative part of scientific society doesn't like "these ball-lightnings and other anomalies"...

So, let's check the possibility of a geometeor/geometeorite. An empirical rule shows that geometeors have a tendency to occur in relation with instabilities in atmosphere, including cloudiness formation/dissipation (and in boundary regions of a cloud's field). Let's check how it went in the Elma event. The associated meteorological info is here, and you can check yourself that the event occurred when a "wet" air-stream was passing over the region, accompanied with variations of cloudiness. Also at the time of the event a dense cloud cover to the south from the event's area was swiftly fading away, and has disappeared almost completely in a couple of hours.
So the meteorological situation was favourable for appearence of a geometeor, and the geometeor/geometeorite interpretation looks rather plausible.
Also it is possible to add that there is an increased level of tectonic activity in the region, where weak earthquakes occur from time to time.

Let's now try to answer on a question - what is the origin of the "meteorite" remnants (rocks) discovered? First possibility could be that a fragment (or fragments) of the fireball, which separated from the main fireball hit the ground in Elma and 'sprayed' some local substance.
Another possibility is that is was a geometeorite, so the substance was transported by the fireball. If the fireball was indeed flying from rather far away, and as it was reported flying from the south to the north. So in this case, the substance could be taken somewhere to the south from Elma (and the cloudiness activity was larger in the bound). There is a volcanic province in this bound.
Results of the chemicalt analysis could help to choose between these possibilities. And of course, something else cannot be excluded, as we are 'beyond our science frontiers'.

So, it looks like currently (with the info on the event I was able to obtain till now) the geometeorite explanation is the best one (at least, others are worse...).

LATER ADDITION: some pictures of the 'Elma remnants' are here:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread830135/pg1

Let me underline that other examples of 'meteorites' are known with 'glossy' crust and even with with calcareus shells inside! See this 1947 publication:
http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-journal_query?volume=55&plate_select=NO&page=96&plate=&cover=&journal=PA...

To finish the examination of geometeors events, the author would like to mention that anomalous sounds, described as gun shots etc. and sometimes accompanied by small tremors are well-known from many places of the world (including the West Australia, where they were heard, for example, on June 26, 1908 [33]). They are usually called "Barisal guns" or "brontides" [34] and, as a rule, are reported to be heard at the places of increased tectonic activity (which often doesn't manifest itself through strong earthquakes). Sometimes strong whirlwinds and other forms of wind actions appear with these sounds. Some authors incline to think that the sounds precede a bad weather. There is a report that the site where these sounds used to come from resembled a site which was struck many times by lightnings. The author thinks that brontides are caused by geometeors (recently he was surprised to discover that as long ago as in 1896 the proposal was published that Barisal guns and other natural booming sounds are likely due to ball lightning explosions!).

Till the end of the 18-th century the general scientific opinion was that all fireballs are terrestrial origin. Soon after the pendulum swung in the opposite direction. In the author opinion, the truth is, as usually, in-between.

You can read about more new events in Tunguska-related news and in geophysical meteor article.

Let's return to the 1908 Tunguska.

3.4. THE TECTONIC AND METEOROLOGICAL ACTIVITY AT THE SITE AND THE TIME OF THE TUNGUSKA

Now the author try to demonstrate that the increase of tectonic activity is expected at the site and the time of the Tunguska.

At first, Tunguska occurred the place of the most powerful volcanic activity in the Earth history 250 millions years ago. The Tunguska explosion epicenter is right in the middle of the ancient volcanic crater, which after its discovery in 1972 got the name "Kulikovskii". This volcano is a part of Khushminskii tectono-volcanic complex [35].
You can see this with your eyes below. Here is a satellite photo (as I understand, probably in near-infrared band) of Tunguska epicenter (from www.adbelkin.boom.ru/tunguska/infr-cn-tung.jpg). In there a "star" marks the epicenter. Pay attention to bean-like Lake Cheko (the largest dimension is 700 m) about 8 km to the NNW of the epicenter.

There are many prominent tectonic faults, circular structures and other geological formations in the region (see FIGURE1). Many of these tectonic faults are no older than of the Neogene age [38]. Several prominent tectonic faults are intersecting near the Tunguska explosion epicenter.

On the fragment a series of complicated circular structures around the Tunguska epicenter is seen. Also pay attention to the ginger-colored line passing through it. On the map it marks the most prominent faults.

Here is what geologists say (from Proceedings of the International conference "90-th years of the Tunguska problem" held in Krasnoyarsk in 1998 - a report by N.Sapronov, V.Val'chak and D.Anfinogenov - translated from Russian):

Tunguska meteorite fall area site is a knot of deep-penetrating faults of the Northwest, Northeast spread. <...> Thus, geology explains many anomalous phenomena in the region of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite: the disturbed nature of the magnetic field, various geochemical and gas anomalies, the halos of mechanical scattering of many minerals, the unevenness of the radiation background, etc. It must be compulsorily and most carefully taken into account in proving the cosmic nature of each particular anomaly, of each particular phenomenon or process.

The southern border of the Tunguska event manifestation is the Lake Baikal rift. This rift is a place of high tectonic and seismic activity.

At least, during last century and at the beginning of 20-th, there were many reports about seismic activity in the middle of the Tunguska event region (about the latitude of Kirensk town) [39]. The author also found a couple reports about earthquakes from the northern part of the Tunguska event region in the middle of 19-th century [5].

There are signs of increased tectonic activity during the time of the Tunguska.

The distribution of the reports on seismic events inside the year 1908 is also remarkable. On FIGURE2 there are the reports on earthquakes in the Lake Baikal region from the spring to the fall of 1908 [39].

It is seen that the seismic events are concentrated near the Tunguska date, June 30. It is also notable to mention the July 1908 message by the Tomsk's student Bryukhanov A. to the director of the Irkutsk magnetic-meteorological observatory, in which Bryukhanov wrote about unusual event near Ust'-Kut settlement (513 km, 152) - the appearance in the 1908 summer of a hot spring with various chemical elements presented. It didn't exist before.

So there are evidences of the activation of tectonic processes at the place and at the time of the Tunguska.

Moreover the author's analysis reveals activation of tectonic processes at the Tunguska times not only in the Lake Baikal rift and the southern part of the Siberian platform but also on more large (global?) scale. The evidences are following (again - any of them taken alone maybe not crucial, but taken all together...).

There was an increase of the number of reported earthquakes all over the world on June 30 and July 1 (1908) - see the picture nearby which shows daily number of the reported earthquakes plus-minus a week around the Tunguska date (i.e. from June 23 to July 7). The original data is taken from [45].

Years close to 1908 was time when the Earth rotation was the most slowest. You can see this on a picture below taken from
http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/earthor/ut1lod/lod-1623.html
Longterm variation in length of day from 1623 to 2000 (reference value is 86400s TAI)

The author searched through the data on the position of the Earth axis of rotation, given in [40], together with the 'momentary' polhode radius of the Earth axis trajectory on the Earth surface (i.e. in plain language, the trajectory of the North Pole). The data in [40] is given with the interval (step) of 0.05 year. It was revealed that between 1908.35 (i.e. May 8) and 1908.40 (i.e. May 26) the strong increase of the polhode radius took place. Then, between 1908.40 and 1908.45 (i.e. June 14) it stabilized. And finally from 1908.45 to 1908.50 (i.e. July 2) the strongest decrease of the polhode radius occurred. The rate (per time) of relative change of the polhode radius for this period between June 14 and July 2 1908 was the largest not only in 1908 but also for the whole period of 1907-1910!
You can see it yourself on the graphic of polhode's radius in 1908, taken from [40]. Date of the Tunguska event is marked by a vertical line.

Moreover, while from the spring to the autumn of 1908 there was an unusual absence of large earthquakes and a decrease of the number of earthquake reports (so the seismic energy release that year was one of the lowest for 20-th century), but on June 30 and July 1 the number of registered earthquakes was increased.

So there are evidences of the large scale (global?) disturbances in the Earth interior in 1908 which culminated at about the Tunguska time.

There are also some other evidences of the extreme geophysical situation at the time of the Tunguska. On June 29 the 'Alps Glow' phenomenon was registered in Austria [46]. Remarkably, it was the only registration of this phenomenon for the whole 1908 summer [46]! Interestingly, that the exceptional sky glow (aurora?) was observed by the Sir Douglas Mawson expedition in the Antarctic just 7 hours before Tunguska [47]. In the expedition papers this glow was described as "The most extensive glow aurora seen on trip" [47]. Curiously, the global geomagnetic activity on these days was rather low [46], so the geomagnetic conditions were against the auroral activity. The only geomagnetic disturbances known to the author were unusual character and were registered in Kiel, Germany [48]. The disturbances occurred every evening June 27-30 for about 7 hours and had the period of 3 minutes. They were not ascribable to any recognized cause [48].

There was a report on disturbances of telegraph lines near Prague at about June 30 [49].

A very powerful (gas?) explosion occurred on July 1 at Makar'evskii mine (not far from the town of Taganrog, Russia) with catastrophic results and on this day the Geophysical observatory near S-Petersburg rcgistered strong air-pressure disturbances.

It is important to note that on June 30 the appearance of a rather large solar protuberance was discovered [46]. I also suspect powerful solar proton event in the late of June, 1908.

There were also some peculiarities in global atmospheric circulation at about the Tunguska date. In June 1908 a high barometric maximum was lying in the north (the Arctic region), and the winds were blowing from the north [49,50]. Cyclones over the Siberia in June were much deeper than usual, it led to significant increase of air pressure gradients [51] (it could also lead to activation of tectonic processes). Another peculiarity was a unusual warm (hot) weather over the Europe and, especially, Siberia in the second half of June. Together with the small number of thunderstorms it led to drought in some regions.

At the beginning of July the situation sharply changed. There was a strong increase in thunderstorm activity. Powerful thunderstorms took place [51,52]. For, example in the Perm' province, Russia in July a quantity of precipitation was a record for the whole 70 previous years of measurements. The northern (Arctic) area of high pressure sharply decreased in dimensions [51].

Remarkably, that an Greenland ice layer corresponding to the spring-summer of 1908 contains extremely large quantity of terrestrial dust (probably soot, in general)!

The author also would like to emphasize that notes of the Tunguska region meteorological stations reveal that it was a change from good weather to a bad weather right on June 30, 1908 (especially on the morning). Recently the author discovered that in late 1920-s while discussing the Tunguska in Soviet Academy of Science outstanding Soviet meteorologist Prof. Mul'tanovskii B. attracted attention on a possibility of cyclonic air mass movement activation at the place and the date of the Tunguska!

The recent research by the author reveals that Tunguska took place during strong meteorological anomaly on the regional level, in particular it exactly coincides with a powerful peak of the atmospheric pressure upsurge.
Here are some details below.

Recently I have ended a research of a cloudness level in association with Tunguska. A reason was an empirical fact that the geometeors have a tendency to occur on the eve of cloudiness upsurge (also it is known that sometimes before an earthquake a cloudiness is decreased in an epicentral area ). For geometeors you can see a graph of cloudiness (for details see my geophysical meteors www-article).

So I have found data of 9 meteorological stations situated no far than 1000 km from the Tunguska epicenter (the closest was 500 km away). I have averaged the data between the stations for better statistics. And indeed, Tunguska was in 'lacuna' in cloudiness, and the averaged daily cloudness level shows strong increase of cloudiness after Tunguska! You can see it on the graphic below.

And one more meteorological peculiarity of the Tunguska. It is thought by seismologists that atmospheric pressure variations can trigger earthquakes.
And geometeors have some tendency to occur during atmospheric pressure variations (especially during its peaks) - see this picture (for details see my geophysical meteors www-article)
So I used the data of 9 meteorological stations situated no far than 1000 km from the Tunguska epicenter (the closest is 500 km away). I have averaged the data between the stations for better statistics. And indeed, the time of the Tunguska was right at the time of a maximum of atmospheric pressure strong upsurge. In the best way it is seen from the data of the Irkutsk station, which had a sampling rate every 3 hours. And the maximum of the air-pressure upsurge was between 6 and 9 a.m. local time (UT + 6h.57min.), while the Tunguska explosion was a little bit later 7 a.m.!
You can see it on the graphic below, where the time of Tunguska is marked with a vertical line.

In other words, cloudiness and airpressure in Tunguska region behaved in accordance with the geometeors empirical theory predictions!

Unfortunately, a little known on meteorological data right in the Tunguska epicenter. While in the closest to the epicenter places witnesses (Evenks) said about a clear weather at the time of the Tunguska event, in some others (typically a little bit far away), they said that weather was not so good. Here are several interesting accounts below. Also, please, pay attention to remarkable "red color" and that sequences of the phenomena don't conform with a meteorite explosion).
- Nastya Genkoul'(river Khushma (somewhere ~32km, ~125)). There was a good weather, then suddenly it rained, strong wind commenced. Trees were uprooted.
- Aksenova O. (upper reaches of the Mutorai river (54 km, 244)). There was a good weather on the early morning. Then wind commenced. It became dark, as before a rain. The ground got red color, and a strong thunder struck. She did not see anything on the sky.
- Andreeva E. Ya. (upper reaches of the Severnaya Chunya river (137km, 84)). There was a windstorm in the morning, then there was a strong thunder, and the ground shook. After the thunder, the sky got red color towards Vanavara.
- Dmitrieva M.V. (a little bit to the north of the mouth of Kimchu river (96 km, 305)). On the early morning the weather not not rainy, but gloomy. The sky was covered with high clouds. No wind. Then there were "explosions", a strong wind, and an earthquake at once. Also after the explosions, the sky got red color, and then the red color gradually moved to the west.

The closest to the Tunguska epicenter Kezhma meteorological station (214 km, 193) registered at 9 pm local time on June 29 cloudiness 3. At 7 am local time June 30 (i.e. at about the time of the Tunguska) cloudiness was 4, and at 1 pm local time June 30 (i.e just less than 6 hours after Tunguska) - cloudiness was 10, i.e. maximum! Also at 2 pm local time a thunderstorm with hail occured between Kirensk (491 km, 131) and Nizshne-Karelinskoye (465 km, 133) settlement (but closer to Kirensk).

Conducted by Dyomin, Dmitriev, and Zhuravlev [1984] statistical analysis of witness's accounts revealed that Tunguska event was accompanied with various meteorological phenomena, including strong wind (windstorms), haze, fog, temperature changes, thunderstorms, whirlwinds.

In other words Tunguska indeed took place during a strong meteorological anomaly, as the tectonic Tunguska interpretation predicts!

It is interesting, how supporters of meteorite/comet fall explain the facts. As just accidental coincidences? But aren't too many the "accidental coincidences"?

As a conclusion, it could be stated that at about the date of the Tunguska there was the large-scale (global?) as well as local (Tunguskan) disturbance of geophysical situation, including activation of the tectonic processes.

3.5. THE PROPOSED SCENARIO OF THE TUNGUSKA

The simplified form of proposed scenario of the 1908 Tunguska event is following.

The large-scale (global?) geophysical disturbances of late June 1908 (see section 3.4) manifested as the activation of the tectonic processes in the southern part of the Siberian platform and in the Lake Baikal rift. On June 30, at the time of large-scale weather worsening, the activation coupled with meteorological activity revealed itself in the most bright form - the Tunguska event.

The first phase of the Tunguska began with the appearances in the atmosphere over the southern part of the Siberian platform (and possibly in adjacent regions) of luminous phenomena. Some of them were bolide-like and being mistaken for a bright bolide (meteorite fall). In general, they appeared above tectonic faults, circular structures, etc.. At about the same time, a swarm of (apparently shallow) earthquakes commenced, accompanied by brontides.
At the vent of the Kulikovskii paleovolcano, the coupling between tectonic and atmospheric processes manifested in a spectacular explosion-like form. In general the seismic and other phenomena probably lasted for several hours from place to place.

Unfortunately physical mechanisms of many of the above-mentioned processes are still unknown. But there are numerous hints that probably terrestrial electricity (electromagnetic procceses) play a large role. Anyway their manifestations on much smaller scales are known.

Below, the author tries to demonstrate, how the tectonic interpretation can explain the phenomena, which the meteorite one fails to explain.

3.6. THE EYEWITNESSES ACCOUNTS

The luminous phenomena of the Tunguska are in the stream of the "geophysical meteors " and 'earthquakes lights' (see sections 3.1, 3.3). Many examples were presented already here and near-by, but here are even some more:

From China in the mid of 1970s:

'Earthquake Engineering and Hazards Reduction in China'
A Trip Report of the American Earthquake Engineering and Hazards Reduction Delegation
Edited by Paul C. Jennings
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Washington, D.C. 1980

Lights and Outgassing Earthquake lights, at least some of which were seen prior to the earthquake, were described in the forms of columns, fans, balls, and sheets. Chu Chieh-cho of the Provincial Seismological Bureau described personally seeing a fireball 75 km from the epicenter on the night of July 21 while in the company of three professional seismologists and a TV crew. The fireball originated at the ground surface about 100 m from where he stood. At first it was about 1 m in diameter. It then shot up to a height of 10 or 15 m, whereupon the volume started shrinking, finally to ping pong ball size. After reaching the maximum height, the ball curved over in an arcuate trajectory and disappeared as it fell to the earth; resembling a meteor in appearance as it moved. The light would dim, then brighten again. Small wisps of white smoke swirled around the light, a slight crackling sound was heard, and an odor of garlic or sulfur was detected. A radio compass and telluric currents were unaffected. A small funnel-shaped hole in the ground was found where, it was thought, gas had been blown out of the ground.

At another place a fireball started near a house, rose up along an arbor, and burned a hole in the roof of the house. A total of about 1,000 fireballs were sighted, and in one evening 50 fireballs were counted. During the daytime, small smoke balls were reported, presumably representing the same phenomenon as the fireballs seen at night. Mr. Chu reported that a correlation with the seasons had been recognized and, possibly as a precursor to the SP earthquakes, a great many fireballs occurred the week of July 25, 1976. More were seen during the evening and predawn than at other times of the day. Most fireballs occurred along intersections of riverbeds and fractures, according to Mr. Chu. Upon specific questioning, he expressed the belief that the phenomenon of fireballs perhaps related to the burning of gas. Natural gas does occur in the Szechuan Province, and an unusual sight to us was to see buses in Chengtu powered by natural gas carried in large rubber bladders on the tops of buses.

<...>

In addition to the occurrences of fireballs, gas fires were reported in other earthquakes. In one such event, an old water well in a field outside of Haicheng had been filled in with rocks and covered with soil and crops had been planted over it. Prior to the 1975 Haicheng earthquake, gas exploded from the well and caught fire, burning the crops in the field. After the Tangshan earthquake, Kao Wen-hsueh of the Institute of Geology reported that leaves in a bean field were scorched and had burned-through holes. Radioactivity was ruled out as the cause in the subsequent testing.

In addition to the fireball lights, other larger scale lights were described as glowings in the sky. The descriptions were not very specific in relation to the SP earthquakes, but such sightings apparently were made during earthquakes rather than before, and were considered rather common. Li Yun-shan of the Shensi Provincial Seismological Bureau related his personal experience before large aftershocks of the 1976 Lungling earthquake in Yunnan. He was stationed in a tent in the epicentral area after the main shock. One night, it was pouring rain and was pitch-black with low clouds. Returning to his tent, he saw the ground and bushes as if they were illuminated under the full moon, yet the rain was still pouring down from the low clouds. The next day, an M = 6 aftershock occurred. On another night when it was still raining, with low clouds, Li Yun-shan woke up at midnight and walked from his tent to the outhouse. He saw a fireball (~ 50 m in diameter) about 200 m away. Not believing his own eyes, he woke up a co-worker. Both stared at the fireball for almost half an hour before they could mutually agree on what they had seen. The next morning, an M = 5 aftershock occurred. Walking over to the location where they saw the fireball, they found that in the middle of the rice field there was extensive evidence of the occurrence of sand spouts.

From Japan in 1995 (just one example out of many):

Earthquake light: 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan
Masashi Kamogawa, Hideho Ofuruton, Yoshi-Hiko Ohtsuki
Atmospheric Research v.76 (2005) pp.438-444

(1) There is a hotel with a nice view on Mt. Rokko. Two young persons who worked at this hotel were looking at the night view of Kobe City and the bay. Then, they noticed a luminous object moving from the edge of Awaji Island to the Mt. Rokko direction for a few seconds. Note that they had their back facing the top of Mt. Rokko. A few seconds later, they strongly felt the ground shaking. From their position, they saw the luminous object quickly moving from right to left. (2) In Osaka Bay, many fishermen had been working before the main shock. They also saw an orange luminous object moving from the edge of Awaji Island toward Mt. Rokko. Since the luminous object was of an observable size from their locations (approximately 40 km distance) and close to the sea surface in their reports, the diameter and the height would be estimated to be around 100 m. They additionally claimed that the luminous object finally hit Mt. Rokko, causing lightning to strike from the sky toward the ground. Almost immediately after that, they also felt the sea surface moving up and down. From their position, the luminous phenomenon moved quickly from the left to the right.

<...>

From reports (1)-(4), the direction of the rupture area was equivalent to that of the movement of the luminous phenomenon and the orbit of the movement was expected to be coincident with the fault line (see Fig. 3).

So now just let explain the existence of the "three trajectories of the Tunguska meteorite fall". If we look at the tectonic map of the region (see FIGURE1) we could see that all three trajectories are above the main tectonic faults of the region. The eastern trajectory superimposes on the Beryozovsko-Vanavarskii fault, the south-eastern projects on the Norilsk-Markovskii fault, and the southern trajectory is over the Angaro-Khetskii fault and partly Angaro-Viluiskii fault. They intersect inside the Vanavara circle structure.

Interestingly, at first, it was thought that the meteorite fell at this intersection site, because local Evenks told about a forest fall, fire and a disintegration of a hill (cliff) in this region. Also there were reports about an appearance of unusual pits in the ground at this region. But, unfortunately, the first research in the area was conducted just in 1960-s and didn't produce definite conclusion.

By the way regarding the Beryozovsko-Vanavarskii fault - there is an interesting phrase in [76] about the fault (translated from Russian by me):

Beryozovsko-Vanavarskii fault within the Siberian Platform was traced from the mouth of the river-Bahta to settlements of Poligus and Mutorai and further along the Tunguska meteorite track into the upper river-Vanavara.

The other places whence reports came about some manifestation of the Tunguska also happen to lie near major geologic features, like the Chadobedsko-Irkineevskii fault and the Chadobedskaya circle structure in the southwestern sector, for example.

The low heights of luminous phenomena explain why there where different accounts from the same settlement, and why practically nobody saw the enormous 'Tunguska bolide' close to the epicenter, as at Vanavara, for example.

3.7. THE FOREST FALL

According to the geophysical interpretation, there could be the following causes of the forest fall (probably they combined):

• "usual" blast air-wave of the explosion. Despite we are not aware of its physical mechanism, intuitively it seems plausible that "an explosion" must produce blast waves, and the acoustical disturbances (the sounds), and the registrations the accompanied barometric disturbances all over the world prove it;
• The wind. It also can be interpreted as a "soft" form of blast air-waves (or geometeors);
• The surface seismic wave action.

Early the author already mentioned unexpected strong wind accompanied the 1886 Chembar event and whirlwinds, accompanying the Barisal guns events.

Here is another interesting event:

Of course, some of the occurrences maybe just coincidental, but in the others the probability of accidental coincidence seems to be very small. The analysis of 490 earthquakes [54] revealed that a few percent of them were accompanied with different forms of wind action.

It is interesting to note that the Tunguska forest damage resembles a damage caused by so called a downburst (a strong downdraft of the atmospheric air). Moreover, the Tunguska meteorological conditions hint on their some possible resemblance with those favorable for 'dry downburst'. Maybe a downburst, or several of them triggered or even driven by the tectonic processes (for example, by heating the atmospheric lower layer, by an increase of the atmospheric electric field, by degassing etc.) played a large role in the formation of the Tunguska forest-fall?

And one more interesting detail. Sometimes lightning strikes could be accompanied by blasts of hot air [55]!

3.8. THE TREES BURN

According to the geophysical interpretation there could be 2 general sources of the trees burn: the light (including infrared and ultraviolet) radiation from the explosive source(s) and electric currents associated with them. The burn by the electric currents could explain the 'lightning-like' tree damage, the burn at the site of the branch break (see section 2.3) and the spot-like character of this burn. Of course in some places burning of endogenic gas outbursts can make an input too. Please, also pay attention that the electric discharges could be responsible for the thermoluminescence anomaly in the epicenter.

Anyway, cases of burn in connections with earthquakes are known. For example, during the 1693 Sicilian earthquake, the small town of Millitello was suddenly plunged into an unusual mist, and a loud explosion was heard. After the disaster, the ruins of the town and its environs showed traces of burn, while the vines in the surrounding countryside looked scorched. More recently, in 1988, bushes were burnt in places in the area of a tectonic fracture on the site of the earthquake in Spitak, Armenia. See also sections 3.1, 3.3.

3.9. THE SEISMIC PHENOMENA

If we look at the map of the tectonic faults at the region, we could see, that the reports on seismic phenomena came from the areas close to tectonic faults and circular structures. Especially strong the seismic phenomena were along the Angaro-Khetskii fault and the southern part of the Angaro-Viluiskii fault. The Angaro-Khetskii fault is also a part of the Trans-Aziatskii lineament, which crosses the whole Siberian platform. The increased number of sky glows (auroras?) was detected over it.

So, besides the main seismic source at the Tunguska epicenter, there were probably a lot of weaker sources in those areas. Probably, the sources were of the small focal depths.

3.10. THE CHEMICAL TRACES

In [16] it was recognized that the composition of the discovered microparticles resembles the traces of increased tectonic activity or volcanic activity. But authors of [16] were not aware of the increase of the tectonic activity at the Tunguska site and time (see section 3.4).

The author also states that discovered chemical anomalies are very similar with accompanying tectonic and volcanic activity. The author compared them with microparticles from the Kamchatka volcanoes and found that their morphology and even dimensions are also similar.

Iridium is also revealed in the volcanic emanations, especially from the "hot-spot" regions [56].

Discovered isotopic anomalies at the Tunguska epicenter also conform the tectonic activity.

--------------------------------------------
(Proceedings of the International Conference
“Asteroid-Comet Hazard-2009” Saint Petersburg
“Nauka” 2010)

Georadar and Hydrogen Studies
of the Tunguska Meteorite Craters
V. A. Alekseev 1  , V. V. Kopeikin 2 , N. G. Alekseeva 1 , L. Pelekhan  3

 ...During the expedition, hydrogen flows were measured on
the routes to the Farington and Stoikovich mountains and around the Suslov
crater. In some areas, the hydrogen flows related to degassing of breakage
structures of the paleovolcano are anomalously high. This fact also confirms
a possible endogenous origin of the geochemical anomalies (elevated con-
centration of microelements in the 1908 moss layers). Anomalous hydrogen
flows suppress plant growth as identified in satellite photographs.
---------------------------------------------

Besides volcanic (tectonic) degassing/emanation, it is also important to mention that there are some evidences that some substance could be brought by the luminous objects, at least, sometimes.

3.11. THE BIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

The author can refer to the work [57]. In there it was discovered the increased number of chromosome mutation in seismically active regions. It is also known that electricity (remember its probable role in Tunguska!) can accelerates a tree's growth.

And the another interesting effect, possibly having relation to some anomalous manifestations of the Tunguska. At a half an hour before the 1988 Spitak earthquake (Armenia, USSR) the launched at Yerevan city ballooned cosmic rays counter began to register the increase of counts unusual character [58].

It is interesting also to note, that at many trees from the Tunguska epicenter the lignification of the 1907 tree rings wasn't completed to the time of the Tunguska [59]. It looks strange from the meteorite point of view. But from the tectonic interpretation, it is well-known, that before earthquakes a plants are affected sometimes, with a tendency to a negative influence.

3.12. THE SKY GLOW

As we saw, the meteoritic interpretation doesn't explain the sky glow. So the only way out for the space-impact interpretation is to declare that the Tunguska and the sky glow are independent and their coincidence is pure accidental and the sky anomalies have no relations with Tunguska.
Of course this can't be completely rule out, but a possibility that these unique phenomena just occidentally coincided looks not very plausible. Moreover in that case a question of the nature of the atmospheric anomalies would be opened...

The geophysical interpretation admits that probably they are just different manifestations of the same geophysical processes. The author already mentioned some geophysical peculiarities of the mid-1908. But there are also some signs that they began earlier. The spring of 1908 was rather unusual. There were very strong floods on many Russian rivers. For example, Moskva-river (which had a record flood for the whole previous 100 years period), Oka-river, Volga-river. Large areas were flooded.

Let's continue with the geophysical peculiarities of the first half of 1908. On May 23/24 it strong snowed in Switzerland. On June 5 and 6 it snowed in S-Petersburg and Petrozavodsk, Russia. Many unusual atmospheric phenomena were seen; a great number halos, strange rainbow etc. But, of course, the most remarkable were phenomena seen on the night (evening) sky. In the evening, March 27 an unusual sky illumination was seen in the north-eastern parts of USA and a thousand km from the shore [61]. It was described as never seen before and in many aspects resembled the sky glow of late June-early July 1908. The author also should mention that similar phenomenon was seen on the evening March 26 and the following several nights in the town of Yur'yev, Russia (now Tartu, Estonia). On this days a geomagnetic activity was enhanced, but as, already mentioned, the glows didn't look like usual aurora. On May 27 the first time since 1906 the "sky-colored clouds" were seen in UK [62]. The next days the sky was too cloudy.

Here we come up to the atmospheric abnormalities of late June-early July 1908. In [46] they are explained as, i) the explosive development of noctilucent clouds; ii) the increased luminosity of the night sky glow. Let's think about their possible origins. Now it is usually thought that for development of noctilucent clouds 3 main conditions must exist: a low temperature at about 80-90 km height, a presence a sufficient quantity of water vapor and small nucleus of water vapor condensation. What could be the cause of the upsurge in any of them?

At first, let us remark, that the late June-early July is the season maximum of a noctilucent clouds appearance. Moreover, as we already saw, this time was the time of the large-scale weather break, roughly speaking, from drought to thunderstorms. In other words, in the atmosphere the quantity of water vapor was significantly increased.

The following factors could also "help" the noctilucent clouds formation. The first one is the increase of the solar activity in the late June. It is known that the increase of the solar activity leads to some decrease of the atmospheric transparency, probably due to build up of microparticles, i.e. condensation nucleus. And also solar flares, and especially solar proton events could lead to the cooling of the middle atmosphere [63]. The author also proposed that the increased tectonic activity could produce an upsurge in the Earth degassing and some of the gases through various chemical reactions could lead to elevated quantity of water vapor in the atmosphere. Anyway, the majority of the noctilucent clouds registrations from the "Salyut" spacestation was over the regions with high volcanic and seismic activity [64]. And finally, the Tunguska explosion itself could lead to a cooling of the upper atmosphere and an upsurge of the noctilucent clouds formation due to a generation of acoustical-gravity and other atmospheric waves [65].

The sky glow of the late June-early July produced no appreciable absorption of a light: "though thin, they were strongly illuminative, and stars shone through them with surprising distinctness" [50]. The daily atmospheric absorption measurements in Paris [46] also revealed no extraordinary absorption on the days of the sky glow, but, as usually on the eve of a weather change, a polarization have changed [46], revealing the appearance of small nucleus in the atmosphere. The author discovered monthly averaged data on absorption in Irkutsk, and they also revealed no anomalies [66]. The detailed analysis of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory data on absorption in USA [12] also revealed that no increase of dust in the atmosphere is associated with the Tunguska, just increased water vapor quantity.

So, despite we don't understand the physics of the processes well, the unusually large appearance of noctilucent clouds conforms with the geophysical situation of that period and the air-waves from the Tunguska explosion probably also made a contribution.

Now let's consider the increased luminosity of the night sky glow. At first, the author would like to mention that the sky glow phenomenon occurred in connection with earthquakes (see also section 3.1). Here are just 2 examples. The earthquake happened September 12, 1841 near Russian town of Nizshnii Tagil. At 2. a.m. a thunder-like rumble was heard and the ground trembled. At 4 a.m. the sky was flooded with the pink light, which at 5 a.m. transformed to the yellow one. The whole day the sky was yellowish, and filled with a smoke. At the place located 40 km to the south-west from Nizshnii Tagil at first a fiery cloud appeared at 5 a.m. on the north-west and for a few hours spread all over the sky. No wind. The second example is the ill-fated Rumanian earthquake of March 4, 1977. From the western part of USSR the permanent pink sky glow was seen with flashes imposed on it. In Rumania the sky glow was in western direction from the earthquake epicenter [55].

Another intriguing luminous phenomenon is probably related with submarine volcanoes activity 1000-2000 km away from it [67]. On 9 April 1984, crews of three separate commercial airlines observed a gigantic mushroom-like weakly luminous cloud. It reached an altitude of about 18 km and a diameter of 320 km for about 2 minutes. No other abnormalities were observed. After the detail research, the connection was proposed with the upsurge of the submarine volcanoes activity about 1000-2000 km from the cloud, but the physical mechanism is still a mystery.

So the first cause for the large-scale sky glow could be the large-scale activation of tectonic processes. Of course, with the present day knowledge we can just propose it and can't prove. But the most important is that similar sky glows happen many times without any giant meteorite or comet. We begin with cases of just luminous spots in the night sky. When this phenomenon looks like bands on the sky, it is sometimes called "non-polar aurora". Some displays seem related to auroras, while others not. German researcher Hoffmeister C. studied this phenomenon for many years. He got their altitudes 90-180 km, with distinct maximum at 120-130 km. According to Hoffmeister's opinion, their spectrum is the enhanced usual night glow one, and they are closely related with noctilucent clouds. He discovered their correlation with disturbances of radiowaves ( wave lengths 350-530 m) propagation. He also conducted statistical analysis and revealed 12 yearly (i.e. 'inside' year) maximums, with one of them on June 18-30. Below are several examples of luminous spots taken from [55].

• 1898, September 11, West Virginia, USA. Oval luminous cloud appeared and disappeared 10-20 times. No auroral activity noted.
• 1915, December, England. A glow in the northern sky, but no magnetic activity to suggest an aurora.
• 1922, January 30, Cumberland, England.
• 1922, September, Sussex, England. A long streak of light above the southern horizon.
• 1957, October 7, Aden. Pale green glow in the sky over Indian Ocean.
• 1978, April 4, Hawaii. Spectacular luminous spots on the sky [68]. It was discovered in [68], this and other similar luminous spots and sky glows tend to occur within 3 hour of lower or upper lunar transit (i.e. about the time of high lunar tide). It hints the probable role of acoustic gravity waves, despite that physical mechanism of the influence wasn't understood [68].

Returning to the Tunguska, we see again the probable role of the acoustic gravity waves, excited by the Tunguska explosion, as well as lunar-solar tide (the angle between the Moon and the Sun was rather small on the Tunguska days).

Now let's examine the cases of the whole sky glows, which often called "glowing night skies" [55].

So, these luminous phenomena are rare, but not unique events. The physical mechanism is not known, but the author probably can say, why we could expect their appearance at the late June-early July 1908.

The first and probably the most important argument is so called "weather lights" [55]. Usually they are luminous whitish or reddish patches on the horizon, often mobile, and located at any azimuth. Their appearance followed by a sharp weather change, generally a storm [55]. As we are aware, the early July there was a large scale weather break to thunderstorms (also favorable for geometeors). A good example of a similar glow on mini-scale is the sky glow on December 23, 1916 (see above).

It is interesting, that "earthquake lights" tend to occur during a passage of cold weather front!

Another argument is the upsurge of the atmosphere glow sometimes seen by cosmonauts from spacestation by naked eyes [64]. The phenomenon consists of several parts. i) The appearance of the second luminous layer of the atmosphere at 250-350 km heights. ii) The increase of the luminosity of the well-known first luminous layer at about 90 km height. iii) The complete glow of the whole atmosphere. It is interesting that the areas with the second luminous layer coincide with the areas of increased proton and electron radiation intensity and increased ionospheric turbulence. Usually these phenomena tend to occur during geomagnetically calm period between geomagnetic disturbances and during solar flares (see also above on the glow of November 30, 1959). As we know, the late June-early July 1908 was a period of increased solar activity.

Sometimes glow was seen even above the spacestation, and one time the visible reddening of bright stars was registered! Indeed, our planet still has a lot of puzzles!

So, the author think that the 1908 Tunguska event and the sky glow of late June-early July 1908 are just different manifestations of the same 'interesting' geophysical situation of that time.

UPDATE OF AUGUST 28,2019: I just discovered a work (article) which in my opinion makes a large step forward in understanding the 'Tunguska bright nights'. Here is about the article:
---------------
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017GeoRL..44.7036S/abstract

Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 44, Issue 13, pp. 7036-7043 (2017).
WINDII airglow observations of wave superposition and the possible association with historical "bright nights" by Shepherd, G. G.; Cho, Y. -M.

3.13. OTHER TUNGUSKAS

As we saw, there are a lot of examples of small-scale Tunguskas. But do also powerful Tunguska-like events occur? In the author opinion the answer is positive. Let's look through the known history. Even some events described by ancient authors hint on their possible geometeor's origin. Of course, we can understand ancient writers descriptions very badly, so the author could talk just about "suspected" events. Here are just everal examples.

The circumstances of the event hint on geometeors. It is supported by that the prominent Suphan Dagi volcano is sleeping on Lake Van shore.

In [70] it was proposed, that it was caused by a large extraterrestrial projectile. According to geological research, this crater is a geological formation [70]. In the author opinion, existing data favour for endogenic origin.

This was the time of "light nights"[71].

In Naples, Italy, in the evening, when the sun was 25 degrees below the horizon, a light was observed in the north, as if the air was on fire, and flashing. At 3 a.m. it was much brighter and spread much westward. Its greatest height was about 65 degrees. The light boundaries were jagged, and scattered, and follow the course of the westerly wind. Stars of 3-th and 4-th magnitude could be easily seen through it. About 4 a.m. a very regular arch was seen to rise gently. About the 6 a.m. the intenseness of the color disappeared, and it vanished at 7.30 a.m.

In [71] there is a reference on the preceding eruption of the Vesuvius volcano, but the closest preceding eruption the author is aware was just in May, 1737.

In Padua, Italy, after sunset on the preceding days, as well as Dec. 16, there appeared in the west a remarkable redness. The same glow happened and on the following evening. On the evening Dec. 16 the air was calm and the barometer was remarkably high. At 5.15 p.m. there appeared near the horizon a blackish zone. Above this zone was another very luminous, resembling the dawn pretty advanced. The highest zone was of a red fiery color. Eastward they extended to the 55 degrees on the horizon, and westward to the 70 degrees. Near zenith there appeared some thin lucid clouds. A little after 6 p.m. the upper part began to emit streamings, or rays, in plenty. Its color was red mixed with whitish and darkish. In a few seconds after, there issued out from the very equinoctial west, a red and very bright column, and a little later, it became curved in the shape of the rainbow. At 8.30 a.m., almost in an instant the bright zone, from the 8 degrees west to the 50 degrees east, became more vivid, and rose higher; and above this appeared a new large one, of a red fiery color, with several successive streaming tending upward, and passing 60 degrees of altitude; the western part had assumed the form of a thin cloud. At 12 p.m. the light was nearly extinct. Twenty minutes after, there appeared a white brightish beam, at 30 degrees west and 60 degrees high, but it soon became invisible. In half an hour later, a very weak light remained in the west, near the horizon.

In Bolonia the glow was so very remarkable that no one remembers to have ever seen the like, it was possible to distinguish houses at a great distance. At 8 p.m. the glow formed itself into a concave arch towards the horizon. The polar star was near the top of its convexity, and some stars shone bright in the midst of the light. At 8.34 p.m. the red light continued spreading. At the upper part, a considerable part of heavens was enlightened with a very vivid red light, which was interrupted by several vertical streaks or columns of a bright yellowish light. At 9.04 p.m., there remained but a little reddish light at the north pole, all the rest was collected near the zenith. In the south, where the sky was clear, there were seen some of those meteors, called falling stars. Several persons reported that in the evening Dec. 16 they perceived a certain stench in the air. There was a very thin fog in the air not only on Dec. 16 but also on the preceding and following days. The mornings of Dec. 17, 18, before and a little after sunrise, the air appeared of an uncommon fiery color. The evening of Dec.17 the crepusculum was of an extraordinary height. Between the north and west, there was seen a very thin fiery red "vapour", which lasted almost till night.

At Edinburgh, England, at 6 p.m. on looking out at windows, the sky was in flame. There was an arch of this red light reached from the west, over zenith, to the east. The northern border of this light was tinged with somewhat of a blue color. This glow did not look like common aurora. It gradually and gently stole along the face of the sky, till it had covered the whole hemisphere. A great circle of the glow came from the west to the zenith.

At Sussex, England. It was a strong and very steady red light. It did not seem to dart or flash at all, but continued going on in a steady course against the wind, which blew fresh from the south-west. It began about north-north-west, in form of a pillar of light at about 6.15 p.m. In about 10 minutes, a 4-th part of it divided from the rest, and never joined again. In 10 minutes more it described an arch, but didn't join the top. Exactly at 7 p.m. it formed a bow, and soon after quite disappeared. It was all the while lightest and reddest at the horizon. At 8 p.m. it began again exactly north. In half an hour it made an arch from east to west, and went quite away to the south, when it ended much with the same appearance as it began in the north, but not quite so red.

At Sheffield, England, at 5 o'clock, afternoon, and all the evening appeared a remarkable brightness in the sky, of a blood-red color, very bright [72].

At Philadelphia on Dec. 16 nothing unusual was seen, but on Dec. 18 an earthquake struck. And "the second evening after, and for several evenings in that month, a red vapour appeared to the south and south-west, like the aurora borealis" [73]. On November 28, about sunset, many people in this town saw a fiery "meteor" in the air, large and bright, it seemed in the zenith, and so it seemed to others some miles from the town.

At Solikamsk, Russia (59.6 N, 56.8 E) on Dec. 17 night as a red light was everywhere above. In the morning it was hazy and stuffy. On Dec. 24 and 25 the phenomenon repeated in smaller degree.

In Chiloe Island, Chile, on Dec. 30 the fiery cloud from the north traversed the archipelago [55].

But probably the most remarkable event occurred at Kilkenny in Ireland on Dec. 16. A great ball of fire appeared, which burst with an explosion that shook great part of the island, and set the whole hemisphere on fire, which "burned most furiously, till all the sulphureous matter was spent." [72]. In [55], cited another source, it was written that on Dec. 26 (probably misprint), much of the Southern Europe was covered by a reddish, luminous haze. At Kilkenny it appeared like a ball of fire in the air, which lasted about an hour and then burst into pieces.

Why not the Ireland Tunguska of 1737!

• 1930, August 13. Brazil. This event is known as the "Brazilian Tunguska" or the "Curuca event" [74]. At first the sun darkened, then fine ash began to fall. Then hissing sound appeared. Three fireballs fell into jungles, accompanied with thunderclaps and earth tremors. In the author's opinion [3], it was geophysical event (earthquake with accompanied geometeors). The event took place in the region of paleovolcanic activity, but, unfortunately, a little is known about local geological structure.
• 1935, December (probably December 11). British Guiana [75]. Near the Marudi Mt. it was a sound of an explosion and an earthquake. A "trail of fire" was seen on the evening sky. Several eyewitnesses reported about a luminous body flew over. Some time later, an area of forest fall was discovered near Marudi Mt. with dimensions 5 by 10 miles. The trees were twisted off some 25 feet above the ground. In the author opinion it was geometeor accompanied whirlwinds [3].

4. CONCLUSION

The author thinks that the present material clearly points out to the geophysical origin of the 1908 Tunguska event, or, at least, the geohysical interpretation conforms with the facts much better then the meteoritic one.

Anyway, there are a lot of things to investigate about our miraculous planet, which, no doubt, will present us a much more puzzles!

5. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

My experience in contacts with scientists and general public reveals some typical questions, which are asked about the 'geophysical Tunguska'. Below I summarize them.

What do other scientists say about your idea?
In 1990, when I sent my article on the tectonic Tunguska to the PHYSICS OF THE EARTH journal, they were surprised with it, but were to recognize that there were no mistakes in it. So they have accepted and have printed it. Since that time the tectonic Tunguska got many supporters (you can understand it, if look at the abstracts of the Tunguska 98 conference, for example). But of course, if you wrote many articles, for example, on the asteroid/cometary Tunguska, you will not be glad with the popularity of the tectonic one. Just read a citation below from http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.rss.html?pid=25819

"If you want to start a conversation with anyone in the asteroid business all you have to say is Tunguska," said Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It is the only entry of a large meteoroid we have in the modern era with first-hand accounts."

The most important critics is from those who knows Tunguska facts. In my opinion Prof.G. Longo knows Tunguska facts well. That's why it is important to consider his critics. Here is from his publication in Longo, Giuseppe (2007). "The Tunguska event". In Bobrowsky, Peter T.; Rickman, Hans. Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society, An Interdisciplinary Approach (PDF). Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer-Verlag. pp. 303–330.

To describe what seen in the morning of 30 June 1908, no one of these reports testify something different from a flying object. Many reports are written after questioning a great number of persons. For example, the director of the meteorological station of Maritui states that his report is written after the interrogation of about 500 persons on a great territory around his station (19). I quote here some descriptions of the corre- spondents:

'a large group of local inhabitants noticed a ball of fire in the north west coming down obliquely” (3); “the workmen saw a fiery block flying, it seemed, from south east to north west” (4); “in the north west a pillar of fire appeared about 8 meters in diameter… it was accurately established that a me- teorite of very large dimensions had fallen” (5); “the local peasants told me that they saw some sort of fiery ball flying in the north” (6); “a loud noise was heard… probably from a passing meteor (aerolith)” (9); “some of local inhabitants had seen an elongated body narrowing towards one end, about one meter in length, torn as it were from the Sun…this body flew across the sky and fell in the north east” (16); “the fall of an aerolith was observed… a fiery streamer was seen” (26); “a ball of fire appeared in the sky and moved from south east to north west. As the ball approached the ground… it had the appearance of two pillars of fire' (36).

The testimony of page 16 was written the 30 June 1908 (the day of the event), that of page 6 – the 1 July 1908 (the day after the event), the others – from a few days up to six weeks after the event. Many correspondents could not understand what they have seen or heard. For example, in the letter referred to on page 6, the correspondent wrote to the Irkutsk observatory: “I have the honor to ask submissively the observatory to com- municate and clarify what this means and could it be dangerous for human life”. These testimonies, and many others, contradict the “alternative” approaches (see Sect. 18.2.3) that deny the impact of an external body with Earth.

"At the beginning of the 9th morning of the local time, a fireball appeared that flew in a direction from the southeast to the northwest." This ball, approaching the ground, took the form of the top and bottom of the flattened ball (as was seen by the eye); approaching even closer to the ground, this ball looked like two fire pillars".

Why do you think that your explanation is better than a cometary one?
Because if you peruse arguments for the "cometary Tunguska", you will see that there is no solid argument in its favour! Moreover, there are a lot of arguments (many of them are very reliable and solid) against cometary Tunguska. By the way, many scientists prefer to talk about a stony asteroid fall in Tunguska, just because the extremely large problems with the cometary Tunguska.
Remarkably, that the cometary Tunguska itself has appeared just because there were very large problems with the "stony asteroid Tunguska"!... In my opinion the "tectonic Tunguska" nowadays is the best in explaining the Tunguska event.
Interestingly, that when I sent my article on the tectonic interpretation of the Tunguska event to PHYSICS OF THE EARTH journal in 1990, I knew not much on Tunguska. Since that time more and more new facts in favour of the tectonic intepretation appear.
And the tectonic interpretation was the only theory, which was able to predict new results in Tunguska - related meteorological peculiarities (see pos. 3.4)

Do you think that Tunguska was an earthquake?
No, if you ask: "was it just an earthquake?". According to modern encyclopedias, an earthquake is trembling of a ground produced by earth's rupture. But, for example, earthquakes lights are out of this definition. And indeed, some of them appear hours, days, and even weeks before an earthquake. So it would be strange to say that a burnt (by an earthquake light ) roof in a house a couple weeks before the August 16, 1976 earthquake in China was caused by that earthquake!
So the phenomena are another way of manifestations of tectonic (endogenic) processes, besides rupture of the ground (i.e. earthquake itself). And observational data point that atmospheric conditions play a large role in the manifestations too. That's why a term (name) 'geophysical' maybe better (despite being more general).
It seems that it is a way of coupling of the subterranean and atmospheric processes, possibly involving some electromagnetic mechanisms, but we still poorly understand it. You can read more in my geophysical meteors www-article.
In typical cases the phenomena are not very energetic, but in Tunguska there was a very rare combination of supportive/intensifying factors (see above), which apparently made them so energetic.

So do you say that (outer) Space has nothing to do with Tunguska?
No, I don't say so. I just say that Tunguska was not a fall of an asteroid (or comet). Our planet is a small part of the Universe. For example there are some researches pointing that solar activity can influence on formation of clouds (and even the length of day). And I admit that some outer Space's processes can influence on appearence of Tunguska. But as in the case of the cloud's formation it would be reasonable to say about this as of terrestrial event in general (while keeping in mind possible Cosmos influence).

Do you know other geophysical events, similar to Tunguska?
There are several events, which in my opinion were probably "other Tunguskas" (see pos. 3.13).
On mini and micro-scales similar events occur rather often (see pos. 3.3), and geophysical meteors www-article).

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