Abstract
There is a hypothesis that fragments of a body from outer space fell to Earth as a result of the Tunguska event. During decades of investigations at the site of the disaster, stone or iron pieces from a cosmic body were not found. In spite of this, the number of adherents of this hypothesis is growing. For one thing, it was determined that the formation of swamp craters at the epicentre of the disaster is contempory with the Tunguska event. Secondly, it was proven that the swamp craters are the result of thermokarst processes: their formation is connected with heat exchange in a permafrost zone. Now we can affirm that fragments of the Tunguska cosmic body (as a comet) with a mass of 10-3 ≤ M ≤ 10 kg reached the Earth’s surface, but they did not form craters. This conclusion was made from the isotopes and composition of element in peat deposits as determined by Kolesnikov’s group and L’vov.
Highlights
The first person to investigate the craters of the Tunguska event was Kulik [1,2,3]
Reaching the epicenter of destruction of the Tunguska cosmic body (TCB), Kulik [1] noted that swamps at the windfall center were studded with dozens of lately formed flat craters which had a diameter ranging from several to dozens of meters and a depth of a few meters
There is reason to believe that numerous craters which were found at swamps close to the epicenter started to form after the Tunguska disaster
Summary
The first person to investigate the craters of the Tunguska event was Kulik [1,2,3]. He essentially believed that the fan-shaped windfall of trees in a circle with a radius of ~30 km was connected with the impact and explosion of a cosmic object. Kulik [1] understood that this was unique situation, inasmuch as the literature about meteorites, with the exception chronicles, did not contain a description of windfall resulting from a meteorite This version was refuted in the fifties, when the area of the epicenter of the explosion was investigated by airplane. Reaching the epicenter of destruction of the Tunguska cosmic body (TCB), Kulik [1] noted that swamps at the windfall center were studded with dozens of lately formed flat craters which had a diameter ranging from several to dozens of meters and a depth of a few meters. According to Kulik [2], these craters were formed by the fall of meteorite fragments with a mass of Mvl ~n × 104 kg They did not form deep craters but broke through the peat to the permafrost, to a depth of ~0.5 m at this place. It was to determine the size of the TCB’s fragments based on isotope and element composition of the substance which reached the ground
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