Russian geologist claims finding chunks of Tunguska Event invader

For over 100 years, scientists have been puzzling over the Tunguska Event, a massive explosion in Siberia that leveled the taiga for hundreds of miles around. Now a paper from the Russian Academy of Sciences suggests that the first physical remains of the blast have been found. The explosion over Tunguska occurred on June 30, …

[Simon Harris]

Surely...

If (2) is supposed to be a whale...

then (3) should be the (now sadly empty) bowl of petunias.

[Mad Chaz]

Re: Surely...

You, sir, now have a dept of 1 keyboard toward me.

We definitely need an icon for delightful reference.

[Mitoo Bobsworth]

Re: Surely...

'Oh no, not again!'

[Zaphod.Beeblebrox]

Re: Surely...

Is this sort of thing going to happen every time we use the Infinite Improbability drive?

[Allan George Dyer]

Re: Surely...

I'm delighted to report that mine is the 42nd up vote.

[J P]

Re: Surely...

Simon - I was going to upvote you again, but it's on 42 which seems far too appropriate to disturb... please consider this an upvote in principle

[Graham Marsden]

I've been looking for that...

...everywhere!

Xrp!ltich the Rplatzian

[Destroy All Monsters]

Weak in history?

Russians were somewhat distracted by a World War, a revolution, and a civil war

Not to mention the attempt to swallow up the newly created Poland and to have the Red Army bring the Revolution to Berlin and Rome by way of invasion. Luckily it all went pear-shaped in front of Warshaw (with no help from the Entente Powers or the League of Nations, btw). Probably the reason Nazis looked at the Bolsheviks with some trepidation and Stalin was fucknasty on the Poles during the re-re-invasion.

He was only able to publish one paper on it before the Nazi's invaded

That would be "reneged on their treaty and decided not to stay on their side of ex-Poland"

And then...

Dubbed the "whale", "boat", and "dental crown" for their shapes

GET OUT OF HERE, STALKER!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Weak in history?

Why, because it did happen, and so what.

[Notas Badoff]

Re: Weak in history?

Umm, you should register as "amnesiac coward".

The whole point of knowing history is to not repeat other people's mistakes. Otherwise, at least video it so we can laugh at you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Weak in history?

As a descrndant of Poles who suffered under Stalin I nevertheless find your rant pathetic, as well as off topic.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Weak in history?

I don't do criticism from ACs

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Weak in history?

"I don't do criticism from ACs"

Well, duh. We do it for you. Weak in language?

[Wzrd1]

Re: Weak in history?

A more germane distraction would be suppressing Poland for decades, that Afghan thing that went totally off of budget and after the fall of the Soviet Union and a rather significant annoyance in Chechnya.

Then, there was that middling distraction in the middle.

Some war that was cold or something.

[Bbrhut]

Quartz is very rare in meteorites and it never occurs in comets. The researcher didn't make a thin section to prove the quartz was melted, no raman spectroscopy, no stable oxygen isotope, no fluid inclusion analysis, this paper is total rubbish. There's an outside chance the fireball melted the surface of some terrestrial pebbles but they're not extraterrestrial.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said.

Seriously - a geologist not producing thin sections is nearly as bad form as them forgetting to leave their hammer at home. Extraterrestrial or impact quartz would be immediately obvious under polarised light.

Why do so many bad papers come out of august Russian scientific organisations these days?

[handleoclast]

No Raman spectroscopy

No Ramen noodle spectroscopy either, which would have revealed these as artifacts of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

[Wzrd1]

Quite true. From the picture, the quartz was regular river quartz that had its softer mineral eroded away. The "boat" appears to be a geode that had its internal crystals washed away.

Without microscopic sectioning and other real sciency stuff, you know, like actually examining them more than under low magnification, they're nothing more unusual than standard streambed rocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense, it was a UFO crashing

I read it in an Erich von Däniken book so it must be true.

NB For those of you under 50, Mr v D was to truth in the 70s what the 'Net is in the 21st century. The name Däniken is Swiss German for "utter bollocks".

[Dazed and Confused]

Re: Nonsense, it was a UFO crashing

It didn't crash, its crews bravely chose to self destruct to save it from crashing in a more densely populated area. Everyone knows this May be true.

[Dave Lawton]

Re: Nonsense, it was a UFO crashing

D & C, intervention required an up-vote.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Nonsense, it was a UFO crashing

> I read it in an Erich von Däniken book so it must be true.

I actually have that in a book "Sci-Fi writing by Soviet Authors", so not particularly Däniken.

It might also have been Putin going back in time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nonsense, it was a UFO crashing

H'es still living then.

[Wzrd1]

Re: Nonsense, it was a UFO crashing

"It might also have been Putin going back in time."

Shirtless, no less.

[The Envoy]

Re: Nonsense, it was a UFO crashing

Aaah! Good ol' Erich is still around, you know...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken

http://www.daniken.com/

;)

[Ru]

Re: Nonsense, it was a UFO crashing

I heard it was the final test firing of Tesla's wireless energy transmission system before J P Morgan pulled all funding by order of the Papal Illuminati. Claims of alien meteorites are exactly the sort of coverup story you'd expect, under the circumstances.

[billdesmedt]

"collapsing black hole"?

> There are also more far-out suggestions that it was a collapsing black hole ...

Strictly speaking, if viewed from the outside, all black holes are "collapsing," I suppose -- in that it would take the lifetime of the universe for an external observer to see any particular piece of infalling matter actually hit the singularity. From inside, not so much. :)

Regardless, I think the word the writer wanted here was not "collapsing black hole" but either "quantum" or "primordial black hole" -- i.e., a BH forged in the big bang and orders of magnitude smaller than an atomic nucleus. For more detail on this and all things Tunguska, see "The Singularity Files" (free on Kindle, Nook, & iBook).

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: "collapsing black hole"?

That was in Larry Niven's "Borderland of Sol" ... a good read and I think the first "real sci-fi" I read during a school holiday at my grandparent's house (I remember reading it several times until I understood what was actually going on). Niven had not yet gotten the memo about Hawking Radiation though.

[Wzrd1]

Re: "collapsing black hole"?

"Strictly speaking, if viewed from the outside, all black holes are "collapsing," I suppose -- in that it would take the lifetime of the universe for an external observer to see any particular piece of infalling matter actually hit the singularity. From inside, not so much. :)"

Pretty much, though an object entering the event horizon is what you're thinking about. Once crossing the event horizon, the object would take an infinite amount of time to reach the singularity.

So, from the inside, should one find a way to survive the approach and entry into the event horizon, the inside observer would most certainly learn what the ultimate fate of the universe is to be, a big pop or whatever else.

In well under a second, from their relative position.

One ponders "volunteering" a handful of politicians throughout the globe for such a mission...

[Ramazan]

Re: why it took over 20 years

25 years to be precise. Maybe some sort of NDA or patent has expired?

[Dazed and Confused]

Re: why it took over 20 years

> 25 years to be precise. Maybe some sort of NDA or patent has expired?

Does Tunguska have rounded corners?

[Martin Budden]

Re: why it took over 20 years

"Does Tunguska have rounded corners?"

Tunguska is a river, so no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: why it took over 20 years

"Does Tunguska have rounded corners?"

Tunguska is a river, so no.

Never seen a river with sharp right angles, erosion soon sorts that sort of nonsense.

OMG, Oh No, now we can look forward to the legal parasites suing ever river in the world. Remember prior art isn't a defence.

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC 07:31GMT - Re: why it took over 20 years

And even if the patent gets invalidated for prior art, you still have to pay for the past infringement. Unfortunately this is not a joke but the US patent system is.

[Martin Budden]

Time for another look?

There must be thousands of bits out there, isn't it about time we had a (serious) go at finding them?

[Wzrd1]

Re: Time for another look?

"There must be thousands of bits out there, isn't it about time we had a (serious) go at finding them?"

Sure, if you're paying! I'll happily tag along and help, for a nominal fee.

For the cause, I'll forgo my usual salary and go with 33-40% of my salary, depending if I get EU medical benefits. With benefits, the compensation goes down.

Beyond blood pressure medicine and such, my primary expenses are now only utilities, food, a modest amount of fuel to get about and property taxes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mild disappointment

I seen Tunguska event and mistook it for this disturbing event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident

[Anonymous Coward]

Occam's razor....

Perhaps the three pieces shown are a dental crown, and a toy whale and boat belonging to the crew of the UFO that crashed.

And the 40 years that followed from the event to the exploration would give the Russian and Soviet government plenty of time to cart off the larger pieces of UFO wreckage!!