Tunguska ... a 40 Megaton Atom Bomb In 1908.

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BEIJING, Aug.12 (Xinhuanet) -- Russian scientists said they have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion in Siberia almost a hundred years ago, China Daily reported today, citing the Interfax news agency as the source.

[AFP]

The scientists, who belong to the Tunguska space phenomenon public state fund, said they found the remains of an extra-terrestrial device that allegedly crashed near the Tunguska river in Siberia in 1908.

Their findings also include a 50-kilogram (110-pound) rock which they have sent to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk for analysis.

The Tunguska blast, in a desolate part of Siberia, remains one of the 20th century's biggest scientific mysteries.

On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometers above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometers (miles) away and devastated over 2,000 square kilometers of Siberian forest.






An expedition of Russian researchers claims to have found evidence that an alien spaceship had something to do with a huge explosion over Siberia in 1908. Experts in asteroids and comets have long said the massive blast was caused by a space rock.

The new ET claim is "a rather stupid hoax," one scientist said today. And it's one with a rich history.

The latest claim was written up by news wires and was making the Internet rounds Thursday morning. According to Agence France Presse, the scientists say they've found "an extra-terrestrial device" that explains "one of the 20th Century's biggest scientific mysteries," a catastrophe that flattened some 800 square miles of Siberian forest in a region called Tunguska.

Various other news reports told of a "technical device" and "a large block made with metal." The researchers were said to chip a piece off for laboratory study.

Most scientists think the Siberian devastation was caused by a large meteorite which, instead of hitting the ground, exploded above the surface.

'Plan to uncover evidence'

The Russian research team is called the Tunguska Space Phenomenon foundation and is led by Yuri Labvin. He said in late July that an expedition to the scene would seek evidence that aliens were involved.

"We intend to uncover evidences that will prove the fact that it was not a meteorite that rammed the Earth, but a UFO," Labvin was quoted by the Russian newspaper Pravda on July 29.

"I'm afraid this is a rather stupid hoax," said Benny Peiser, a researcher at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. "The Russian team stupidly stated long before they went to Siberia that the main intention of their expedition was to find the remnants of an 'alien spaceship!' And bingo! A week later, that's what they claim to have found."

Peiser studies catastrophic events and related scientific processes and media reports. He runs an electronic newsletter, CCNet, which is among the most comprehensive running catalogues on the subject.

"It's a rather sad comment on the current state of the anything-goes attitudes among some 'science' correspondents that such blatant rubbish is being reported -- without the slightest hint of skepticism," Peiser told SPACE.com.

Longstanding mystery

Asteroid experts don't have all the answers for what happened at Tunguska. There were few witnesses in the remote region and the explosion left no crater.

Author Roy Gallant spent 10 years investigating the scene of the event for his book, "Meteorite Hunter: The Search for Siberian Meteorite Craters" (McGraw-Hill, 2002).

In an interview with SPACE.com when the book was published, Gallant said scientists are gathering "accumulating evidence tending to support the notion that the exploding object was a comet nucleus. This is the collective opinion of most Russian investigators; although some say they cannot confidently rule out a stony asteroid."

Peiser said there is a "general consensus" among experts worldwide that the culprit was an exploding comet or asteroid.

"Not surprisingly, the blast did not leave any remains of the object intact," Peiser said. "However, researchers claim to have found evidence of increased levels of cosmic dust particles in Greenland ice cores which are dated to 1908 and which they link to the Tunguska event of the same year."

Longstanding speculation

Speculation about aliens and Tunguska go way back. And there is a reason: No other visitor from space -- natural or otherwise -- has had such a well-documented impact on daily life in modern history.

The explosion on June 30, 1908 was equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT.

"Witnesses twenty to forty miles from the impact point experienced a sudden thermal blast that could be felt through several layers of clothing," writes Jim Oberg in "UFOs & Outer Space Mysteries" (Donning Press, 1984). The blast was recorded as an earthquake at several weather stations in Siberia."

In Europe, it didn't get dark that night. People said they could read the newspaper by the light of the mysterious blast, Oberg reports. Telescope operators in America noticed degraded sky conditions for months.

No crater was found, and wild speculation ensued.

Enter sci-fi

Struck by the similarity of Tunguska and Hiroshima decades later, a science fiction writer named Kazantsev wrote a story in which the Tunguska blast was the exploding nuclear power plant of a spaceship from Mars, according to Oberg.

A few Russian scientists took up the cause and claimed to find various bits of evidence -- never substantiated -- for a civilized alien explanation. Oberg wrote in 1984 that even then, as evidence built for a natural cause, a handful of "spaceship buffs seem to have grown more desperate, but no less effective, in corralling the public's attention." He said annually some unsuspecting journalist would stumble on the claims and write about them, setting off a fresh round of public speculation.

On that front, little has changed since 1984.

Astronomer Philip Plait, author of the myth-debunking book Bad Astronomy (Wiley & Sons, 2002), agrees with Peiser that the Russian researchers intention for finding ET-evidence hurts their case.

"They are not undertaking a scientific expedition, that is, an unbiased investigation to see what happened," Plait said Thursday via e-mail. "They are going to try to prove their preconceived ideas. That's not science, that's religion. And it almost certainly means that they are more willing to ignore or play down any evidence that it was a comet or rock impact, while playing up anything they find consistent with their hypothesis."

Prove it

Whatever anyone believes, Plait points out that proof is what's important.

"I am not saying they didn't find an alien ship. I am saying that it's a) unlikely in the extreme, and b) they are predisposed to make such claims, which means we need to be very skeptical, even more so than usual in such cases. If they provide sufficient evidence, then scientists are obligated to investigate, of course. But given everything I've read, their evidence to even consider a non-natural cause is pretty weak."

Plait has even thought about what evidence might be necessary. A chunk of debris would help, but not just any sort of material.

"It would need a weird ratio of isotopes, for examples, or clear evidence of long duration space travel," he said. "Even then they must be careful; manmade space debris rains down on Earth all the time."

Plait, a naturally skeptical person, is willing to wait and see.

"Let's see what these guys bring back," he said. "In the end, it's not what they can claim but what they can support with factual evidence that counts. The burden of proof is clearly -- and heavily-- on them."

[ Last edited by  winamp05 at 27-11-2006 03:12 PM ]

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The Tunguska event in 1908 flattened 800 square miles of Siberian forest -- and the object didn't even reach the ground. Astronomers say similar events will occur in the future, and one over a populated area would be devastating.


Russians add new twist to old UFO myth

Tale of 1908 Tunguska explosion gets even more tangled



Tunguska Page of Bologna University
Almost a century after the 1908 Tunguska explosion, flattened trees still cover the Siberian landscape.

By James Oberg
NBC News space analyst
Special to MSNBC
Updated: 9:04 p.m. ET Aug. 12, 2004


HOUSTON - A flurry of reports from Russia about the discovery of fragments of an alien spaceship at the site of the 1908 Tunguska explosion may be nothing more than wish fulfillment by devotees of a half-century-old Russian space myth, or they may actually have been based on genuine spacecraft fragments ? but of Russian origin.

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Either way, or even in the highly unlikely event the reports turn out to be credible, these stories reflect the way the century-old Tunguska blast continues to resonate in the human psyche.

Expedition leader Yuri Lavbin prefers the alien technology interpretation. That? the theory he admits he started with, even before he got to the area. But other space experts have pointed out that the region is a drop zone for discarded rocket stages launched into space from Russia? Baikonur base, and in fact was the crash site of one prototype manned space capsule at the very dawn of the space age.

On June 30, 1908, residents of southern Siberia spotted a dazzling fireball crossing the sky, followed by a flare brighter than the sun. Minutes later, a shock wave knocked many of those residents off their feet. When later expeditions reached the nearly inaccessible swamps where the explosion had occurred, they found trees flattened down in a pattern pointing away from ground zero ? but no crater, and no meteorite fragments.

The first Soviet expedition was sent to the site in 1927, in hopes of finding metallic ore. Although a series of natural theories followed over the years, a Russian scientist and science-fiction author who visited Hiroshima in late 1945 postulated that the Tunguska blast, too, must have been nuclear in nature ? and hence, the result of a visit by space aliens.

But Dutch space historian Geert Sassen suggests an earthly origin for the space fragments reportedly just found, and they could well have no connection with the 1908 event. ?hey might have found some parts of the fifth Vostok test flight,? he told associates via e-mail.

Sassen was referring to a flight on Dec. 22, 1960, meant to carry two dogs into space. According to ?hallenge to Apollo,? NASA? definitive history of the space race, "the payload landed about 3,500 kilometers downrange from the launch site in one of the most remote and inaccessible areas of Siberia, in the region of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River close to the impact point of the famed Tunguska meteorite."

A team of space engineers located the capsule, disarmed the destruct system, and rescued the canine passengers.

Natural explanations
Initially, astronomers were attracted to the idea that the object had been a comet nucleus, to account for the explosion when it slammed into the atmosphere. They toyed with other theories, including proposals involving antimatter and ?ini-black holes,? but for many years there were no reliable theories on what happens when large objects hit Earth? atmosphere.

That changed in the 1980s, as observations of artificial and natural fireballs expanded, along with the power of computer simulations.

?hen the first modern models for atmospheric impacts were published in 1993,? NASA asteroid expert David Morrison said, ?t became clear that this was a stony body.? He suggested that it was ?omewhere between an ordinary chondrite and a carbonaceous chondrite in physical properties.?

It couldn? have been a ?irty snowball? ? that is, a light, fluffy comet, he continued. ?n contrast, cometary objects with this mass, of low density and/or icy composition, would explode tens of kilometers above the surface and cause no harm.? We know this now because Pentagon satellites have actually been observing such explosions for several decades.

Unfortunately, Morrison adds, ?he old comet theory persists out of inertia.? As to current scientific thinking, he says ?unguska was very likely a stony object about 60 meters [196 feet] in diameter that disintegrated explosively at an altitude of approximately 8 kilometers [5 miles].?

UFO versions
It didn? do the new Russian UFO story? credibility much good that it first appeared on the pages of the newspaper Pravda on Tuesday. In Soviet days, Pravda was the propaganda arm of the Soviet Communist Party, but under new management, it became a tabloid-style scandal sheet with a special penchant for wild paranormal tales.

?xplorers believe they have discovered blocks of an extraterrestrial technical device,? the article stated, adding that they assumed it was the one that had crashed in 1908. After dismissing a century? worth of scientific investigation into natural theories for the H-bomb-sized explosion, the article concluded: ?he only real explanation can be linked with powerful electromagnetic phenomena,? presumably of artificial origin.

The head of the expedition, Yuri Lavbin, told journalists that his team had concluded that the object moved from west to east, not from southeast, on its approach to the explosion zone. Using satellite photographs, he identified search areas near the town of Poligus, and that is where he located the metal fragment.

Lavbin reported that he knew all along that the crash had been caused by a UFO, and that his expedition had been organized to find the proof. In his scenario, there was a natural object that threatened to destroy Earth, but aliens intervened to save our planet.

? am fully confident and I can make an official statement that we were saved by some forces of a superior civilization,? he explained. ?hey exploded this enormous meteorite that headed toward us with enormous speed.?

Photographs of the fragments may become available in the near future, as well as the results of laboratory testing. This would help differentiate something truly alien from the space debris that the Russians have been scattering across the Tunguska region for the last 50 years.

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History of a mystery
Sassen? suggestion that the mysterious ?pace fragment? found in the Tunguska area is more likely to be of Russian origin than Martian origin is supported by decades of history during which the Soviet government tolerated public interest in UFOs as a way of camouflaging actual space and missile events. Many of the most famous Soviet UFO stories that are still promoted in Western books and on Internet sites have been traced back to original ? but highly classified ? military space missions.

The most spectacular Soviet ?FO wave? in history occurred over the southern part of the country in 1967 and 1968, when crescent-shaped giant spaceships were reported flying across the skies. Endorsed as ?nexplainable? by top Russian scientists, the widely witnessed apparitions turned out to be secret tests of Soviet thermonuclear warheads diving back from orbit.

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In 1978, the smoking gun of Soviet ufology was a ?ellyfish? UFO that drifted through the skies of northwest Russia, zapping computers and panicking predawn witnesses. It turned out to be the contrails from a rocket carrying a spy satellite from a secret space base. A similar secret launch in September 1984, seen by the crews and passengers of several commercial airliners, sparked stories of death rays and alien attacks.

At the time, Moscow officials denied that such space and missile events were occurring ? and some were borderline violations of arms control treaties. Thus, it was convenient to have an explanation for ordinary people who saw them in the skies and wondered what they could have been. So for a generation of Russians, ?lien visitors? became the explanation of choice for unusual lights in the sky.

NBC News space analyst James Oberg spent 22 years at NASA's Johnson Space Center as a Mission Control operator and an orbital designer. He is the author of several books on UFOs as well as the Soviet space effort, including "UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries" and "Uncovering Soviet Disasters."

? 2004 MSNBC Interactive

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