Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:56:33 -0400
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Tunguska event centennial today
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Keith F. Lynch wrote:
> Today (June 30th in the relevant time zone) is the 100th anniversary
> of the Tunguska event, in which nearly a thousand square miles of
> Siberian forest were flattened by a tremendous explosion.  Asteroid?
> Comet?  Starship?  Antimatter?  Time traveler with an H-bomb?  Nobody
> knows.

Experiments conducted on models (arrays of toothpicks, more or less)
using explosive charges have indicated that it was either a large body
skipping off the atmosphere, or something that caused a directional
explosion.  They got the directional components from this, but I don't
recall exactly what the figures were.  Such an explosion got them the
pattern of fallen toothpicks matching the fallen tree patterns.

> Could it happen again today, perhaps over a major city?
> Nobody knows.

I do!  Yes, it could.  Very few things in nature are totally unique, and
anything even close to that sort of event would be "it happening again".

-- Mike B.