Bottom line: The Tunguska explosion on June 30, 1908, was the largest asteroid impact in recorded history. It flattened 830 square miles (2150 sq km) of Siberian forest. Researchers are preparing for future Tunguska-sized events.Jun 30, 2021
How big was the asteroid that hit Siberia in 1908?
How big was the meteor that hit Siberia in 1908?
The Tunguska event (occasionally also called the Tunguska incident) was a tremendous ~12 megaton explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of June 30, 1908.
What caused the Tunguska explosion in 1908?
In the early morning of June 30, 1908, a massive explosion flattened entire forests in a remote region of Eastern Siberia along the Tunguska River. … Khrennikov and co say the explosion was caused by an asteroid that grazed the Earth, entering the atmosphere at a shallow angle and then passing out again into space.
How big was the meteorite that hit Russia?
about 17 meters "The asteroid was about 17 meters [56 feet] in diameter and weighed approximately 10,000 metric tons [11,000 tons]," Peter Brown, a physics professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada, said in a statement.
How powerful was the Tunguska meteor?
The energy of the explosion is estimated to have been equivalent to the explosive force of as much as 15 megatons of TNT—a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945.
What size was the asteroid that killed dinosaur?
It was formed when a large asteroid, about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in diameter, struck the Earth….Chicxulub crater.
| Impact crater/structure | |
|---|---|
| Depth | 20 km (12 mi) |
| Impactor diameter | 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) |
| Age | 66.043 ± 0.011 Ma Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary |
| Exposed | No |
When was the last big meteor to hit Earth?
The last known impact of an object of 10 km (6 mi) or more in diameter was at the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago.
How big was Tunguska?
830 square miles Bottom line: The Tunguska explosion on June 30, 1908, was the largest asteroid impact in recorded history. It flattened 830 square miles (2150 sq km) of Siberian forest. Researchers are preparing for future Tunguska-sized events.
How big was the asteroid in Siberia?
With an estimated initial mass of about 12,000–13,000 tonnes (13,000–14,000 short tons), and measuring about 20 m (66 ft) in diameter, it is the largest known natural object to have entered Earth's atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event, which destroyed a wide, remote, forested, and very sparsely populated area of …