h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Note: This is a summary of what I've posted on the "Tanguska Explotion" thread but that is taking too long to load and the typo is starting to grate .

OK - I think that the most probable cause of the "incident" is that a comet struck the earths atmosphere and that the friction caused it to explode at some height above the ground and that this explains the observed phenomena.

Why do I think it was an air burst? Well, there's no crater as would be evidenced by any impact with (or explosion on) the ground.

Why do I think it was a comet? Comets are much less dense than meteorites (being made mostly of ice rather than rock) and so would be less likely to make it through the earths atmosphere in tact (and thus leave a crater as above). Also, comets have a tail which can look like a saucer-like shape....which some reports claim was seen before the incident.

Why don't I think it was a nuclear bomb? Primarily because of the size of the blast radius. Even the hydrogen bomb pushed to spectacular size would not have a blast radius which caused significant damage 400 miles away. Also no-one has detected any residual radiation and this would be present if there were a fission device involved.

OK - why does the blast look like that in Hiroshima? The destruction and associated blast pattern in Hiroshima was caused by the size of the explosion rather than anything inherent in the fact that it was a nuclear explosion. An equivalent amount of energy released by chemical explosives would produce the same pattern.

Anyway - that sums up where I've got to on this. Didn't even mention the little green men.....doh!

There was a similar incident last year over New Zealand (North Island, I think). The article I read in the Times (UK) suggested the object responsible for a large explosion over the island was a comet or meteor about the size of a large truck. I remember being surprised that the article was pushed back to page 7 or 8, given the amount of hype surrounding earth impacts at the time...

I know the Guide makes no claim of comprehensiveness or accuracy but i think this article should be removed as most of the facts are wrong and the rest of the text is unsubstantiated.
SOME EASY ONES:
the soviet union only came into existance after 1917, and the KGB were only created in the fifties - a less paranoid reason why they had nothing to say at the time.
The site was visited the FOLLOWING year, not in 1927.
I doubt there is a source saying the sky of europe was LIGHTENED by the explosion for several weeks. big bangs always make the place darker after the first few seconds.
It is very difficult to make a nuclear reactor explode as fission devices need initiators to go bang and fusion devices need fission bombs to make THEM go bang. one hopes that an alien civ would be bright enough not to accidentally make these darwin award winning silly mistakes.

and the reason that trees stand near the centre of the blast is that the blast is vertically down on them from an point air-detonation and therefore knocks off all the branches but does not apply force horizontally to the trunk. only trees some distance away will get the side on force.

so there. would be fun if there was some residual radiation, though.

I actualy have a book on this subject and goes into quite some detail all the events and probable causes. A few things I would like to mention are that the explosion was equal to a 30 megaton nuke, the area of forest it ripped up was 800 square miles in size and men were thrown into the air over forty miles from the epicentre. The explosion was so fercious that one horror-striken herdsman was rendered mute for severn years afterwards. I would like to say that I believe in the antimatter theory which states that a tiny piece of antimatter fell from space and hit Earth. Because the Earth is matter, the meeing of matter and antimatter would produce an intense explosion as the explosive release of pure energy took place.

I actualy have a book on this subject and goes into quite some detail all the events and probable causes. A few things I would like to mention are that the explosion itself was equal to a 30 megaton nuke, the area of forest it ripped up was 800 square miles in size and men were thrown into the air over forty miles from the epicentre. The explosion was so fercious that one horror-striken herdsman was rendered mute for severn years afterwards. I would like to say that I believe in the antimatter theory which states that a tiny piece of antimatter fell from space and hit Earth. Because the Earth is ordinary matter, the meeting of matter and antimatter would produce an intense explosion as the explosive release of pure energy took place.

Regarding the dissmal out of hand by of the KGB having no knowledge.

1. Tsarist Russia had the secret police called Cheka.

2. 'Iron Feliks' Dzershinky was the First spymaster and his agency wasthe forerunner of the KGB. Remember that the NKVD transformed into the KGB after the second WWII. Files on anything would still have been available.

3. However since russia was in turmoil, I doubt the russians would have been able to detect of do anything above what is now Secondary school science.

4. If Alien Involvement is to be believed, then it would be plausible that they would land in Siberia, as is still the worlds treasure trove of resources, and any ALien Life, would want to investiage what resources we have in earth.

5. Alien Weapon Tests Maybe?

Or Maybe just 30'000'000 tonnes of TNT? Which just happened to be levitating in the sky and moving up, and down, and shaped likea saucer?

Hey! I was watching the space channel a little while ago and they had a special on this. Now I'm not sure of the validity of the show but I thought they said there was a little residual radiation or something similar. Maybe I'm mistaken but I don't think so. Anyway, I believe the antimatter theory. Also there was a theory I heard, probably on the special, that was talking about alternate worlds that energy but not matter and affect both. You see minor particles, protons and electrons, have a spin to them, clockwise and counterclockwise, except for neutrons which only have clockwise spins I believe(correct me if I'm wrong). Some people believe in another world existing with only countclockwise neutrons (neutrinos? again I'm not sure, it's been a long time). A meteor or something crashed into this alternate world and the energy comes into this world. Or so the theory states. I don't believe it because if it was true wouldn't we see the light from peoples flsahlights in the opposite world? anyway that's my