The Tunguska Event

by sacolton 11 Replies latest jw friends

  • sacolton
    sacolton

    June 30, 1908

    At around 7:17 a.m. local time, Tungus natives and Russian settlers in the hills northwest of Lake Baikal observed a column of bluish light, nearly as bright as the Sun, moving across the sky. About 10 minutes later, there was a flash and a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses closer to the explosion reported the sound source moving east to north. The sounds were accompanied by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows hundreds of miles away. The majority of eyewitnesses reported only the sounds and the tremors, and not the sighting of the explosion. Eyewitness accounts differ as to the sequence of events and their overall duration.

    Over the next few weeks, night skies were aglow such that one could read in their light, from dust suspended in the stratosphere by the explosion. In the United States, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory observed a decrease in atmospheric transparency that lasted for several months, also from the suspended dust.

    The Tunguska Event, sometimes called the Tunguska explosion, was a massive explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around 7:14 a.m. [1] (0:14 UT, 7:02 a.m. local solar time [2] ) on June 30, 1908 (June 17 in the Julian calendar, in use locally at the time). [2]

    The explosion was most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 miles) above Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates for the object's size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across. [3]

    Although the meteor or comet burst in the air rather than directly hitting the surface, this event is still referred to as an impact. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 megatons [4] to as high as 30 megatons [5] of TNT, with 10–15 megatons the most likely [5] - about 1000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan and about one third the power of Tsar Bomba. [6] The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres (830 square miles). It is estimated that the earthquake from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale, which was not yet developed at the time. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area. [7] This possibility has helped to spark discussion of asteroid deflection strategies.

    The Tunguska event is believed to be the largest impact event on land in Earth's recent history; [8] impacts of similar size in remote ocean areas would have gone unnoticed before the advent of global satellite monitoring in the 1960s and 1970s.

    This makes me think of this scripture:

    Revelation 8:11

    "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." (Revelation 8:10, 11 - KJV)

    Do you feel this will be a large meteor fated to strike the earth and cause environmental calamities like what happened in Tunguska?

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    Discovery Channel, as well as History Channel is quite fond of doing programs about the chances of future meteor or comet strikes on the earth.

    Nasa (or Norad) does have a near-earth object program going to try to identify dangerous entities. Of course, "near" in their terms means even tens of thousands of miles. And, of course, many many small objects enter the atmosphere every day but are not large enough to cause any damage, or even actually make it to the surface.

  • Twitch
    Twitch

    Events such as this and larger have happened before and will happen again. It's only a matter of time.

    Whether or not you believe it is because of God's will is subjective speculation.

    Twitch (of the "where is my sackcloth again?" class)

  • logic&reason
    logic&reason

    We live in a hostile universe.

  • SacrificialLoon
    SacrificialLoon

    It'll happen again at some point. Earth's been hit by worse.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater

  • joebin
    joebin

    conspiracy theories..lol

  • Hortensia
    Hortensia

    has nothing to do with scripture. Natural event. Has happened before. Discovery channel has run a documentary on this several times. Interesting, but not an omen.

  • VoidEater
    VoidEater

    Do you feel this will be a large meteor fated to strike the earth and cause environmental calamities like what happened in Tunguska?

    Fated...as in roll enough objectives that attract each other around in a bowl and some of them will hit each other?

  • yknot
    yknot

    A few of my science teachers suggested Tesla

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step
    "And the third angel sounded....."

    Yes, I bet he did. A flatulent angel decides to have an 'air burst' over Russia and kills 18 million trees! There should be a law against it, or at least from Jehovah having those curry parties in higher places.

    HS

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