The Tunguska Fireball

At night, you can sometimes see a meteor if there are no bright lights nearby. We call it a “falling star.” Most meteors die as they enter the earth’s atmosphere. The sun burns them up, even though they are made of rock and metal.

            When a meteor hits the earth, it is then called a meteorite. Most are very small. However, occasionally in the past, large meteorites hit the earth and made huge craters. There is a one in Australia and another in Arizona. They are both thousands of years old.
            Was a meteorite the cause of the explosion in Tunguska, In central Siberia, in 1908? On June 30 of that year, the inhabitants of the lonely Tungus plateau saw a very bright light in the sky. Seconds later, they heard a tremendous explosion. As far away as Europe, people saw their night sky illuminated. For years afterwards, they talked about the brightness of the sky that night.            Tunguska is so remote that it was twenty years before scientists traveled there to look for the cause of the explosion. Even after all that time, the area was still completely destroyed. Tree were black from the explosion and lay flat on the for a twenty-mile radius.  At first, scientist thought a meteorite was the cause. When they couldn’t find a crater, they thought it might be the blast from an early top-secrete atomic bomb. Others said it might be a he ball of fire. a lot of the theories were really just guesswork. Newspapers printed articles on the fireball of Tunguska. Some journalists went further. They wrote about the crash landing of an alien space ship.            Years have passed since then, but even today no one can fully explain the Tunguska explosion. one recent theory is that a meteor exploded just before it hit the earth’s surface. That is why there was no crater like those in Arizona and Australia. However, no one knows for certain, and the explosion in Tunguska remains a mystery.