The Mystery of the Tunguska Fireball

by Surendra Verma

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Fire in the Sky
Case of a Missing Meteorite
Tale of a Fiery Comet
Asteroids Behaving Badly
Traceless Tunguska
Incredible Journey of a Black Hole
Matter in Question
Blast from Below
Opening the X-files
Fireball in the Dinosaurs' Sky
Whodunit?
Timeline
Sources & Futher Reading
Index

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Russia

272 pages, Paperback

First published March 29, 2002

About the author

शिक्षा: भाषाविज्ञान में एम.ए.।

प्रकाशित कृतियाँ:

उपन्यास: अँधेरे से परे, मुझे चाँद चाहिए, दो मुर्दांे के लिए गुलदस्ता।

कहानी-संग्रह: प्यार की बातें, कितना सुन्दर जोड़ा।

व्यंग्य-संग्रह: जहाँ बारिश नहीं।

नाटक: तीन नाटक, सूर्य की अन्तिम किरण से सूर्य की पहली किरण तक, आठवाँ सर्ग, छोटे सैयद बड़े सैयद, शकुन्तला की अँगूठी, एक दूनी एक, कश्ैद-ए-हयात तथा नींद क्यों रात-भर नहीं आती।

सम्मान: केन्द्रीय संगीत नाटक अकादेमी, साहित्य अकादेमी तथा भारतीय भाषा परिषद द्वारा।

सम्प्रति: स्वतंत्र लेखन।

सम्पर्क: 631, शान्तिवन, न्यू लिंक रोड, अँधेरी (प.), मुम्बई-400088

Reviews

[Victor Sonkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is simply a brilliant book; well-written, well-researched, exact in its many references to all things Russian (even though the author obviously is not a Slavic scholar or anything). The dearth of information about the Tunguska events, of course, makes any author to plunge into other exotic theories and guesses, but even that is done in good style. Highly recommended.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always been interested in books dealing with some of the great mysteries of the world. One such is the Tunguska event of 1908 when an object exploded over the Central Siberian Plateau near the Tunguska River "a remote and empty wilderness of swamps, bogs and hilly pine and cedar forests." The explosion flattened 2150 square kilometres of the Taiga forest. Fortunately, the area is largely uninhabited so few if any fatalities occurred. Vanavara, a small trading station, was 70 km from the site and a trader sitting outside his house was knocked off his chair. "He had only a moment to note the size of the bright blue 'tube' that covered an enormous part of the sky". Reverberations were registered around he world and " bright, colourful and prolonged dusks" occurred in the northern hemisphere.

Astonishingly, no expedition visited the site until 1927 when Leonid Kulik, a Russian mineralogist, undertook the journey through very difficult terrain. He expected to find the crater of a gigantic meteorite. None was found. So what was the object that exploded with such devastating force?

That is the subject of "The Mystery of The Tunguska Fireball" by Surendra Verma. This book provides a very interesting overview of the mysterious Tunguska event. The event itself is thoroughly described and the various attempts to explain it are summarized with considerable time devoted to the necessary information (always quite interesting) to help the reader understand the scientific background of each. The final chapter gives an excellent and fair summary of the present state of knowledge and evaluates even some of the really bizarre explanations. A Russian website asked its visitors to answer the question "What do you think the Tunguska object was?" They were limited to one theory. The results were:

A comet 31%
A Meteorite/asteroid 27%
An alien spaceship 9%
Other 33%

While the comet theory held the field for some time, Scientists have now largely rejected it and the rogue asteroid theory is the dominant opinion. And it is only an opinion as no explanation actually seems to cover all the events that occurred as a result of the cataclysm.

Other theories include:

A mini black hole that passed through the earth
An anti-matter rock that annihilated itself
a mirror matter rock that nobody could see
A Volcanic blow-out
A giant lightning ball that materialised from nowhere
An explosion from some unknown subterranean and atmospheric processes
A plasmoid surrounded by a strong magnetic field
A zap from an alien laser
An experiment of a death ray invented by Nikola Tesler


Published in 2013, "The Mystery of The Tunguska Fireball" includes some recent similar events which have occurred in Siberia. It is a fascinating read.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blimey! I thought that this one had been put to bed a long time ago. 'The Tunguska Fireball' from Surendra Verma shows that the debate rages on. The sub-title confidently informs that the book is 'Solving One of the Great Mysteries of the 20th Century'. In actual fact, everything is up in the air. Bright light across the sky, big bangs, huge area of forest flattened like matchsticks, pressure waves felt thousands of miles away, the sky was bright at night over much of Europe. On the plus side, Tunguska is largely thousands of miles of forest, scrub and bog. Very little human occupation and any town is hundreds of miles away. The first investigation of this 1908 event was almost TWENTY years later. Leonid Alekseyevich Kulik did boldly go, in 1927. He decided that it must have been a meteorite strike, and went digging in search of big holes in the ground. Unfortunately, from 1927 to WWII, Kulik's expeditions could find no trace. Total ablation.
Verma's book, from 2005, follows the scientific debate that has raged for over a century. Was it a meteorite? Asteroid? A comet perhaps? A black hole!? Did you know that a mini black hole can be much smaller than the full stop at the end of this sentence. Then we investigate anti-matter. Or what about mirror matter. If that's too far out, consider escaping methane from some volcanic vent, or a giant lightning ball. Eventually we are dealing with X-files and flying saucer crashes.
I'm non the wiser!

[Bill Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

After finishing Against the Day, I was curious about the Tunguska event and how it was perceived when it happened and my favorite parts of this book answered that question -- magnetic and luminous anomalies across the planet that were not correlated to whatever happened in Siberia until a couple decades later. The rest of the book is a series of explorations of phenomena that have been credited with causing the event -- comets, meteors, asteroids, antimatter, black holes, and a variety of less credible origins. Much of the text is not directly related to Tunguska but intended to give a lay reader an understanding of why those causes appear as suspects for the blast. The explanations are simplified so they read more like an elementary school textbook than a book for grown-ups, an effect somewhat improved by the author's sense of humor. I'm sure there are better books on the subject but this one at least had the grace to keep the SF and the science at a safe distance from each other and it answered the questions Pynchon's book raised for me.

[Andrew Fear · Rating 4 out of 5]

If like me, you knew vaguely about the Tunguska event in 1908, this is a good place to start learning more. There's a clear exposition of the main theories, including some which may come as a surprise. The book is a more than a little discursive in parts so you pick up other things en passant as well. Generally this is a good thing, but there is a little too much on crank theories at the expense of spending more time with serious ones and I'm not sure a whole chapter on the demise of the dinosaurs was really necessary, especially with the short shrift given to the Vitim fireball. In fact more time could have been spent on the history of such events in Siberia in general as it seems to get more than its fair share and that may be important. However all content, regardless of how pertinent it is to the matter in hand, is interesting and presented in an entertaining way. The author does come to a conclusion and I think it's the right one, but won't say what it is here.

[Douglas Reedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many different views.

The author has collected more views about the Tunguska event than you can shake a stick at. Most views are worth pondering, but a couple are way out there.

[Lilith · Rating 3 out of 5]

libro è impostato con uno stile schematico che ne facilita la lettura. L'argomento è già di per sé affascinante, forse avrebbe meritato ulteriori approfondimenti. voto 6.5

[Matteo Pellegrini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per chi non lo sapesse il 30 giugno del 1908 a Tunguska, nella taiga Russa, si verificò un'esplosione che distrusse centinaia di chilometri di foresta e che fu avvertita sino a 1200km di distanza.

Sono sempre stato incuriosito da questo evento è quando ho trovato questo libro ho deciso che era il momento di documentarsi maggiormente.

Il libro è molto ben strutturato, esamina tutte le teorie nate negli anni, dalle più logiche (asteroide o cometa) a quelle teoriche (asteroide di antimateria, di materia specchio o un buco nero) sino a quelle più improbabili (lo schianto di un Ufo o "il raggio della morte" di Tesla)

Per ogni teoria l' autore dedica un' ampia sezione del libro a spiegare a cosa ci si sta riferendo spiegando molto bene cosa sono un asteroide, una cometa e via dicendo, dando la possibilità di comprendere appieno di cosa si sta parlando.

L' autore non vuole arrogarsi il diritto di possedere la verità assoluta o di risolvere il mistero, ma semplicemente vuole portarci a conoscenza di un evento ed aiutarci ad esaminare le sue possibili cause.

Un libro molto interessante, per nulla pesante, ma anzi che si legge anche velocemente, che mi ha aiutato a comprendere meglio un evento che forse non tutti conoscono, ma che é forse stato uno dei più importanti del secolo scorso e che involontariamente ha deciso quale sarà il prossimo libro che leggerò

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author, Surendra Verma, is an Australian science popularist. This book is a very basic and general overview of the Tunguska event of 1908, it investigation and the various theories adduced to account for it over the last century. The text often goes off in the direction of other matters related to these dozen-plus theories. The reader therefore gets excurses about such matters as ball lighning, Nicholas Tesla, the history of meteorology etc. The quality of these treatments vary. Verma's discussion of the Roswell incident, for instance, indicates very little knowledge of the matter and several glaring factual errors are made.

For what it's worth, no hard and fast conclusion as to the cause of the Tunguska event is determined. The thrust of the evidence, however, would seem to indicate a rocky meteorite as the least exotic of the hypotheses adequate to explain the physical evidence (though not all the eyewitness accounts).

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was picked up after looking for more information on a reference made in The World Without Us.

The Tunguska Fireball was something that in June of 1908 flew across the Siberian sky and exploded in a 15 megaton blast that flattened over 2,000 acres of Siberian forest and was registered seismically all the way in England. The book details the various Soviet expeditions to this remote area of Siberia to find out what that something was and provides explanations of the various explanations that have been put forth based on the results of those expeditions. Some of the theories explained and examined are the arrival of a stony asteroid or comet, to more exotic hypotheses involving black holes, antimatter, mirror matter, volcanoes, ball lightning, and "geometeors," to really bizarre notions about crippled alien spaceships, laser beams from other planets and death rays secretly invented by Nikola Tesla.

[Katia M. Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read. It covered the event, accounts, explorations and took the reader through some of the most plausible explanations with evidence. It also included background material of those involved in early investigations. There was a chapter on the more far out interpretation of causes which was done rather tongue in cheek. Ultimately there is no definitive answer and the reader is left to speculate given the evidence. There is a good bibliography. Read this if you like a good scientific whodunit.

[Ballpeendash · Rating 4 out of 5]

What was it? That's the thing! Nobody knows!!! If you're into unsolved mysteries/phenomena, this is for you. A relatively easy read that gives you the rundown of loads of theoretical physics (miniature black holes passing through the planet!?!?!) as well as a wealth of information to a fairly recent (100 years ago) event that has been well studied, well documented, but little understood. Plenty of theories are presented...yet they all seem to leave something to be desired.

[Matteo · Rating 3 out of 5]

libro interessante che analizza tutte le possibili spiegazioni sull'esplosione di Tunguska: peccato che in certi punti si dimostri un po' ripetitivo e in altri si perda in spiegazioni non molto attinenti all'argomento (come le cause della scomparsa dei dinosauri)

[Derrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Blah. It was an interesting event, but I think it suffers from a lack of material to use to write from. It felt like the author was grasping at straws to finish this book.

[Kdremak · Rating 4 out of 5]

And it leaves one wondering....

[A'ledyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the various perspectives. It was a very informative book and I learned some new things.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very complete examination of the possible causes of the 1908 explosion in Siberia.