The huge 15 megaton airburst explosion which occurred in remote Siberia, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, at about 7:30 a.m. on June 30, 1908. The explosion flattened thousands of square miles, and the seismic shock wave was detected as far away as London. Despite the inaccessibility on the Siberian tundra, Leonid Kulik explored the region in search of meteorite fragments (although not until 1921), but was never able to locate anything.
Recent studies have shown that Tunguska was caused by the airburst of an asteroid about 5 miles above the surface of the Earth. The asteroid is believed to have been roughly 60 meters across (Ostro 1997).
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© 1996-2007 Eric W. Weisstein