From Stephen Wagner,
Your Guide to Paranormal Phenomena.
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"I was sitting on the porch of the house at the trading
station, looking north. Suddenly, in the north... the sky was split in two, and
high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with
fire. I felt a great heat, as if my shirt had caught fire. At that moment,
there was a bang in the sky, and a mighty crash. I was thrown twenty feet from
the porch. The earth trembled."
Dialogue from some asteroid impact movie? An
excerpt from a science fiction novel? A witness to the
test of a nuclear explosion? The witness is real, but the event was not
the test of an atomic or nuclear device. And it certainly wasn't fiction.
This incredible event, related by this Russian witness, took place
on the morning of
And exactly what happened there is still unknown. There are several
theories as to what caused the great explosion in the sparsely populated forest
at 62 degrees north latitude, but there is no definitive proof for any of them.
Nearly 100 years later, the debate about the
Whatever happened, the resulting devastation was enormous. A
fireball as bright as the sun was seen streaking across the sky. Observers 300
miles away heard deafening bangs. Trees were flattened in a radial pattern over
an area of 850 square miles. Seismic vibrations were recorded by instruments as
far away as 600 miles. Fires burned for weeks. Forty miles from ground zero,
people were thrown to the ground and knocked unconscious. One man was hurled
into a tree and killed. Scientists examining the area calculated that the
explosion was equivalent to 40 megatons of TNT - 2,000 times the force of the atomic
bomb released on
Other, more
enigmatic effects were recorded:
·
disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field
·
a local geomagnetic storm
·
a reversal of soil magnetization
·
an electromagnetic pulse, similar to what would be created by a
nuclear explosion
·
aurora displays before and after the event
·
unusually bright nights seen before and after the event
·
genetic mutations in plants and animals
·
accelerated growth of plants afterward
·
radiation-like burns and deaths of
exposed people.
Next Page > Theories
- Logical and Kooky
1
From Stephen
Wagner,
Your Guide to Paranormal
Phenomena.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
So What Happened?
The theories put forth to account for the
·
A fragmentary asteroid or meteorite that exploded in the
atmosphere.
·
The nucleus of a comet that likewise exploded in the atmosphere.
·
An unusual tectonic event.
·
A tiny black hole that entered the Earth's atmosphere from outer
space and imploded.
·
A chunk of antimatter that reacted with the matter of our planet.
·
A crashed UFO, the propulsion drive of which exploded.
·
A deliberate attack by extraterrestrials.
·
The result of a test of Nikola Tesla's
wireless power transmitter.
Again, there's no definitive proof for any of these ideas, but
let's consider each.
Asteroid - This and the comet theory are favored by scientists, of course
- mainly because they can't conceive of any other explanation.
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I'd have to agree that it's the most likely. But
because there is no crater and little debris, there's only circumstantial
evidence. Before
Comet - This is the prevailing theory today - that it was a 100,000-ton
fragment of Encke's Comet. Since there is little
debris, the explosion might be consistent with a comet, which generally is a
loose mixture of stone and ice. Upon explosion, very little debris would remain
as evidence. Ironically, it is the very lack of evidence that boosts the
credibility of the comet theory.
An unusual tectonic event - Andrei Yu. Ol'khovatov,
a Russian scientist, has recently come up with the interesting, plausible
theory that
Black hole - This idea isn't taken very seriously by mainstream
scientists, simply because it's not known whether such small black holes even
exist. And if they did, what the result would be upon one entering our
atmosphere is completely unknown.
Antimatter - This idea is also readily dismissed, since it is unlikely
that antimatter would be able to transverse space and reach our planet without
already encountering some matter and annihilating.
Crashed UFO - There's no evidence whatever of this idea, of course. No
fragments of the spacecraft or piece of an alien's intergalactic map. If it were the explosion of the UFO's propulsion system - nuclear
or whatever - it might have vaporized all traces of the ship, but come on....
Extraterrestrial attack - If they were going to attack, why would they
choose an unpopulated region, unless their intelligence was bad? Or unless it was meant as just a warning. And it it was just a warning, where was the follow-up or contact?
Nikola Tesla's experiment - Granted, this idea is
far more unlikely than an asteroid or comet strike, but I find it quite a bit
more interesting. A lot of myth has grown around the mysterious, dark and
temperamental figure of Tesla. Although known as the discoverer of the
principals of alternating current and other inventions,
he is also credited in some quarters with far more notorious inventions,
including a death ray. Some say the controversial HAARP array
in
Next page > The Tesla
Connection
2
The
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