Marek Stanislaw ?bik

Tunguska Cosmic Calamity Marek Stanislaw ?bik

The Tunguska Event is the largest cosmic calamity caused by collision of an interplanetary object with the Earth that happened in the XX century and it has been extensively studied over fifty years. It began when at 07h 14m 28s local time on the 30 th June 1908 an enormous fireball appeared above Central Siberia (60o 55' 04".6 N, 101o 56' 55".6 E) moving from south-east to north-west. This bolide was accompanied by intensive sonic and optical phenomena culminating in a huge explosion. A huge flash set fire to the forest, and a ballistic wave of this giant explosion devastated the Siberian taiga over an area of about 2150 square km. Eyewitness reports quoted here describe this phenomenon as it looked to the local people over a vast area of the Earth, starting from near the epicentre in Central Siberia across Western Europe. There is also an extended resume of the scientific achievements that many expeditions contributed to the modern understanding how the interplanetary environment interacts with our Earth. Significant effort of Russian scientist Leonid A. Kulik (1883-1942) was in focus in this booklet. This scientist and adventurer devoted to the Tunguska event his entire enthusiasm and many years of hard work in organising and attending numerous expeditions. Events which happened in the Siberian taiga in 1908 have been covered up so as to present a mythical mystery, over-grown by a number of exotic and fantastic hypotheses. For this reason this book will pay attention to original documents and direct witness reports which were necessary to make present publication credible and consistent. These expeditions and their findings are summarised in this booklet.