Tunguska event

A massive explosion over Siberia on June 30, 1908, that flattened forest across a vast area. It is widely attributed to an asteroid or comet fragment exploding in the atmosphere.

Airburst: An explosion in the atmosphere caused by a fast-moving object or weapon, rather than a surface impact. The Tunguska blast is the best-known natural example of a large airburst.
Leonid Kulik: A Soviet mineralogist who led expeditions to investigate the Tunguska site in the 1920s and 1930s. Kulik’s expeditions documented the flattened forest and searched for impact fragments.
Evenki people: An Indigenous people of Siberia whose traditional homelands include the region around the Tunguska site. Evenki accounts describe the explosion and its effects before scientific expeditions arrived.
Impact event: A collision between a natural space object and a planet, moon, or other body. Tunguska belongs to the broader family of cosmic impact events, despite lacking a confirmed crater.
Atmospheric entry: The passage of an object from space into a planet’s atmosphere, where heating and aerodynamic forces can break it apart. Entry heating and pressure likely fragmented the Tunguska object before it reached the ground.
Tunguska expedition of 1927: The first major scientific expedition to the Tunguska region, led by Leonid Kulik in 1927. Its observations established the pattern of treefall around the blast area.
Russian Empire: A Eurasian empire ruled by the Romanov dynasty until the Russian Revolution of 1917. The explosion occurred in a remote region of the Russian Empire.
Planetary defense: The detection and mitigation of asteroids and comets that could collide with Earth. Tunguska demonstrates that airbursts can cause extensive damage without reaching the surface.
Asteroid: A small rocky or metallic body orbiting the Sun, smaller than a planet and larger than most meteoroids. An asteroid fragment is a leading explanation for the object that produced the explosion.
Tunguska treefall pattern: The radial arrangement of fallen trees around the central zone of the 1908 Siberian explosion. The pattern records the direction and broad shape of the blast’s effects.

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