Extracted from Nexus Magazine

Volume 12, Number 3

April - May 2005

MICROSPHERULES FROM THE TUNGUSKA EXPLOSION

Indirectly pointing in the same direction is the chemical composition of the microspherules found in the peat at the disaster site. These are unusual for meteoroids and are particularly rich in alkaline elements.

Reasoning about the mechanism by which the terminators operate, we can assume that with their powerful electromagnetic charge they were supposed to attach themselves to a flying meteorite and alter its trajectory so that it passed out of the Earth’s atmosphere.

If the meteorite’s trajectory was such as to make deflection impossible, the terminators simply destroyed the rocky splinters - literally melting the meteoritic substance, which subsequently hardened into tiny spherules.

Numerous soil samples taken at different distances from the destruction site have yielded magnetite spherules containing up to 10% nickel, which supports the idea that they came from space. Besides magnetite, silicate spheres have also been found. They range in size from 5 to 400 microns. The magnetite particles display a great variety of shapes and different surface characteristics.

Besides the predominantly spherical formations, one can also find drop-shaped particles that were produced by the spattering of molten meteoritic substance under the influence of the colossal temperatures produced by the actions of the terminators. Some spherules have a shiny surface; others have a matte, grainy and even finely porous surface, which is due in part to the meteoritic substance vaporizing when the matter was viscous.

Often the spheres are hollow with a slag-like look to the inside. Sometimes one comes across conglomerations of magnetite and silicate spheres, indicating that they were formed at the same time and pointing to the complex composition of the Tunguska meteorite associated with the genesis of these spherules.

Work carried out in 1961–62 established that there is a certain pattern to the distribution of these spherules on the surface. The greatest concentration of them is found in a strip 50 to 60 kilometers wide, extending northwestwards from the epicenter of the meteorite explosion and which can be traced for over 250 kilometers.

In the disaster region, covering an area with a radius of about 130 kilometers from its centre at the Kulik site, there are three identifiable zones of peat enriched with microspherules. The first, with a thin sickle shape, curves around the epicenter. The second reflects the movement of the bolide in the region of zones 4 and 5, to the east and northeast of the Kulik site in the upper reaches of the Southern Chunia River and thus coincides with the start of the disintegration of the meteorite.

The third zone, very large and amorphous, is located precisely in the region of Voronov’s crater. It is no coincidence that the microspherules in this area display certain peculiarities of structure and formation that set them apart from those in the other zones, as the destruction of the meteorite took place directly in the ground and so material from the soil became mixed with meteoritic matter during vaporisation.

The bolide was completely vaporised by the explosion, and the products of that process were scattered in the form of extremely fine spheres over an area of 15,000 square kilometers. Their combined mass is estimated at around 10 tonnes. It is for this reason that all the expeditions that visited the area of the explosion found nothing of the meteorite itself, apart from a dusting of silicate and magnetite spherules that the blast wave spread across the entire Earth.

The Olonkho epic and surviving legends tell us that several decades after the epic flight of Niurgun Bootur, Kiun Erbiie ("the gleaming aerial messenger") took to the air, heralding the appearance of Uot Usumu Tong Duurai.

This suggests that the Tunguska explosion is identified as Niurgun Bootur.
 

THE 1984 CHULYM EXPLOSION

Decades passed, and then on 26 February 1984 a meteor crossed the sky of western and eastern Siberia at a height of roughly 100 kilometers, precisely following the trajectory of the 1908 Tunguska body.

At that time, passengers in a bus observed from an elevated section of the Mirny highway far to the north a thin "pillar of fire" extending from the ground to the sky that then began to undergo various geometrical metamorphoses. The sight lasted several minutes. It was red in color.

Fishermen in the area of the River Chona observed rising into the air from the hills to the north (the "Valley of Death" region) two enormous, shining spheres that, gradually picking up speed, soared vertically upwards and disappeared behind the clouds. The whole event took several minutes, after which time the clouds continued to glow for a while. Then, without reaching the ground, the bolide exploded in a shower of sparks in the area of the River Chulym (a right tributary of the Ob').

An expedition dispatched to that area found, as with the Tunguska event, no traces of meteoritic material apart from magnetite and silicate spherules. They discovered no large-scale uprooting of trees, as the explosion took place at great height.

To all appearances, this was Kiun Erbiie, the herald of Uot Usumu Tong Duurai, and so by the start of the new millennium the researchers were in a fervour of expectation.

THE 2002 VITIM METEORITE

If the ancient legends are to be believed, the emergence of Uot Usumu Tong Duurai is always accompanied by terrible destruction.

Expeditions to the Valley of Death area planned for the end of the 20^th century and the beginning of this century were postponed several times on account of reports from Siberia of animals migrating away from their intended destination. The researchers took the exodus of fauna as a direct indication of the complex’s energy plant having entered another active phase.

What the researchers both awaited and feared, because of the highly unpleasant forecast contained in the Olonkho, took place in September 2002. The first report of the flight of a space body came from the American military. Drawing on data received from a military satellite, the US Department of Defense distributed information about a large meteorite falling in the area of Bodaibo in the Irkutsk region of Russia.

The satellite recorded the appearance of a shining object at a height of 62 kilometers, moving at an angle of 32 degrees to the horizon. Observation continued to the point where a powerful explosion took place at a height of 30 kilometers. Preliminary calculations put the power of the explosion at an equivalent of 200 tonnes of TNT.

The first interviews with witnesses to the Vitim meteorite explosion pointed to a parallel with the Tunguska event in terms of phases of development. Despite the fact that the night of 24–25 September 2002 was overcast - a low 10% cloud cover with rain, the lower edge of the clouds being at 1,100 to 1,200 meters - there was no difficulty in establishing the sequence of events and spotting the obvious similarity to the Tunguska event.

In this case, everything followed the already familiar pattern and began with the exodus of fauna. Hunters questioned reported that animals left the area shortly before the Vitim explosion.

Thirty minutes before the explosion, the energy complex began to enter its most active phase. It is noteworthy that one of the witnesses questioned noticed that his dog became agitated and began to whine half an hour before the explosion!
 

The Energy Pillar and the Red Glow

A few minutes before the first explosion, the complex began to disgorge the "terminators". Here are some eyewitness accounts.

Yevgeny Yarygin was on duty at the electrical distribution centre in the settlement of Muskovit:

...I was on duty in the switchboard room whose window faces south. The weather was cloudy, rainy, and it was drizzling. We were sitting and chatting. A glow appeared outside the window. Shadows appeared. The light was coming from the window. Through the windows we could see a bright hemispherical glow beginning to rise from behind the hills to the southeast [at a bearing of roughly 160–170 degrees; VU].

 

The light was white, like you get in welding. The white light seemed to rise upwards and behind it the light began to shift into the red and maroon [a red pillar was seen by the bus passengers before the Chulym explosion, and also by witnesses to the Tunguska explosion - VU]. Little "rays" were visible above the ascending hemisphere. The glow spread over the whole sky.

 

The light was even and unbroken; we could not see any flying objects. The parting of the Yermikhi stream, above the watershed of which the glow was rising, was brightly lit. Then everything began to dim and went out. The glow lasted around 10 seconds.

I went out onto the landing outside, went to the fence and opened the door. By then about 30 seconds had passed after the disappearance of the glow. There was a penetrating report, an explosion, a very sharp bang. It made your ears ring and even made you weak at the knees. Plaster came down in the building. Everything moved and shook. There was a single bang.

 

That was at seven minutes to two. But a distant noise had appeared even before the beginning of the glow - something like the roar from an aircraft [witnesses to the Tunguska explosion compared this noise with a three-inch shell in flight - VU]. The sound came from the same quarter as the glow, but the bang came from the opposite side, where the glow had been heading. I heard that someone was sitting in an armchair at home and the chair moved under them...

Victor Vedeshin, questioned by telephone on 22 October 2002, said:

...I was on duty that night at the boat station. A strong wind blew and at the same time a strong glow appeared in the sky. It was white, with a greenish tinge to it, bright like a welding spark or lightning, making your eyes hurt to look at it. Right then a shining flying sphere appeared. It flew beyond the horizon in the direction of Maximikhi...

Vitaly Valiuk, who worked at the town hall in Bodaibo, noted:

Eight minutes to two in the morning. Dense cumulus clouds in the sky. I was standing and smoking. Suddenly there was a flash. I thought it was lightning. But the glow grew as if someone was turning on one bulb after another. It became as bright as day. Some object flew from the southwest to the northeast...

 

You couldn’t tell if it was a sphere or not. It had a turquoise glow around it. It was perhaps the size of the lunar disc. And it had a tail behind it - reddish like the sparks from a bonfire. The angle of fall was about 60 degrees. The speed of the object was very high. While it all flew past, I had time to finish my cigarette and 30 seconds later there came a rumble, like a distant explosion...

Marina Kovaleva reported:

It was five to two. The light was strong. That light lasted a few seconds, then everything turned pink, then it got darker and darker and darker, becoming a reddish light. Then there was a rumbling. You got the impression, well, I don’t know, like something below the ground, not clear but dull [a subterranean rumble from the working complex was also noted by witnesses to the Tunguska explosion who compared it to the rumble of train wheels - VU]. And after that rumble the window panes rattled...

The glow was visible in the settlements of Kropotkin and Mama, located around 140 kilometers on either side of the bolide’s presumed crash site.

One of the witnesses stated:

Out of the blue my dog began to whine for no apparent reason. Suddenly we heard a strange noise - some kind of hum. Two or three seconds later there was a flash - white at first, then blue, then red and white again. And then, about three minutes later, there was a terrific bang. The china all fell off the table...

Just over three minutes before the explosion, the first "terminator" was delivered to a waiting position for a final reconnaissance before striking.

The object detected by the American military satellite was not a meteorite or bolide. Its instruments recorded the flight of the first terminator as it plunged down to intercept the Vitim meteorite, which gets its name from the place above which it exploded. A blinding flash lit up the taiga for a few instants with a bright light, like daylight, after which there came an explosion of such force that the blast wave, coming from a height of 32 kilometers, left all the dwellings for dozens of kilometers around without glass in the windows.

The researchers who made their way to the explosion site indicated by the US satellite saw pines on the way with their tops and branches torn off. Yet when the instruments indicated they had reached their destination, they could not find a meteorite crater or even anything remotely resembling one.

There was no large-scale uprooting of trees at the site because the first explosion took place much higher up than that at Tunguska and successfully deflected the meteorite away from inhabited settlements.

However, significant uprooting of trees was observed, especially at the top of hills, by hunters Dmitry Sasun and Piotr Fiodorchuk to the southeast of the place visited by the researchers.
 

The Terminators in Flight

As with the Tunguska event, simultaneously with the first explosion other spheres were flying towards the spot from different sides. There are plenty of witnesses to this.

For instance, Sergei Khamidulin noted:

On the night of 24 September I was fishing by the Kuduminskye Islands [5–6 km below Mama on the River Vitim]. The sky was completely clouded over and it was spitting with rain. I was fishing together with my wife. Suddenly it turned bright, fully as bright as day. Then out of the clouds came an object.

 

It seemed already to be flying low. It was giving off light like from welding, but you could look at it without your eyes hurting. The angular dimensions of the disc were less than the full moon. The sphere was crumbling (scattering sparks). During the flight we could hear a sound (there was some kind of "rustling").

 

It wasn’t coming towards me, but passed close by (to the south). The object flew over the Vitim and disappeared behind a mountain to the northeast (the bearing of the "departure point" was 30–40 degrees). The light disappeared after the object was hidden behind the mountains. A minute or a minute and a half later there was a resounding crash, like thunder, that rang out twice. There was no blast wave or tremor.

This witness sketched the flying sphere with a tail.

Valentina Leontyeva works as a guard at the Lenzoloto gold-mining enterprise and was on duty that night. She noted:

...At two o’clock something fell. A round-shaped body rushed across the sky. A tail stretched out behind it. I thought "Is that a star?", but it was way too big. After 10 seconds there was an explosion, then a second. The door to my office even burst open...

The Vitim case provided plenty of evidence of the electromagnetic nature of the terminator spheres and their powerful effect on the environment.

In the town of Mama, in the area of the flight path, there was a power cut that night. At the moment the terminators appeared, the light-bulbs suddenly lit up (dimly, at half strength)! The explanation that specialist physicists came up with is that,

"the flight caused a powerful disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field, and the change in it led to current appearing in a closed circuit".

Additionally, the coronal discharge known as St Elmo’s fire - small glowing balls - appeared on pointed objects. That phenomenon is also associated with changes in electrical field, but this time in the atmosphere.

Georgy Kaurtsev, on the staff at the Mama airport, reported:

...That night there was no electricity. The settlement was without power. I woke up and saw a flash of light outside. The chandelier that was turned off started glowing half-strength. After 15–20 seconds, the "ground rumbling" began...

Vera Semionova and Lidia Berezan, security workers at the airport, went out onto the field around 1.50 am and saw lights shining at the ends of the fence posts around the weather station. The lights shone for a second or a second and a half. Mama was, incidentally, still dozens of kilometers from the flight path of the terminator.

As the terminator sphere was a powerful electromagnetic structure, it produced a humming noise like the crackling of high-voltage power lines. Many witnesses recalled that as the bolide passed they heard a distinctive "noise", "hum" or "rustling".

The energy level was so high that it produced an electrophonic effect (generating an audible noise when in flight) and left a rainbow trail from which sparks flew.
 

Meteorite Destruction

After the first strike, which shifted the meteorite’s course away from inhabited places, the other "terminator spheres" closed in and began methodically destroying the remnants of the intruder from space. That is why there were bangs from several collisions.

Olga Ponomareva, an operator at the telephone exchange, noted:

…I was on duty. I had just lain down. First there was a rumble; all the windows rattled. I thought someone was trying to get through on the switchboard. I answered, "Yes?" No reply. "Who’s there?" I asked. Then the light appeared, bright as day. There and gone. And the windows kept rattling. I thought it was an earthquake, but then why was it light? When the rattling began it was five to two.

 

The glow lasted a matter of seconds, but the rattling seemed to me to go on for another five minutes. I went outside, too, to see who was knocking. And it was still rattling. There was a roar like a jet plane in flight.

First the roar, then the bang. That means there was a roar, then the glow (while the noise still continued), and then the bang (like at Sasovo).

Yevgeny Chechikov reported:

We were spending the night on the river... When the glow appeared, it was so scary that we dropped to the ground. Then when the glow stopped, we heard sounds from an explosion. We heard an explosion, then two more small ones, quiet, almost without any gap...

Sergei Chernyshev:

It was two or three in the morning. I wasn’t sleeping, just lying there. The flash lasted about three seconds - white light so bright you couldn’t look. I ran outside and it was dark. Roughly a minute passed. [He later said that 8–10 seconds had elapsed between the flash and the bang.] From the distance, from behind the mountains, came a triple echo. The walls in the house creaked. The sound came from the direction of Vitimsky. There were three explosions...

Alexander Sergy, head of the administration of the Vitimsky settlement, said when questioned on 26 October 2002:

People saw a sphere with a tail. The angular dimensions of the sphere were "less than the Moon". There was a noise that built up - quiet at first, then louder and louder, even becoming frightening. After the flash there was a bang, 15–20 seconds later, maybe thirty. The explosion was very powerful.

 

People thought it was some sort of disaster, although they are used to explosions. If the explosion was at a height of 10 kilometers, then it was several tonnes (four to five) at a minimum, perhaps many times more. It’s hard to judge the [TNT] equivalent with an aerial explosion. There was not one blast, but between one and six (like people banging the radiators) - through the air and ground...

 

A staccato shaking of the ground, between two and six diminishing shocks…

As for the power of the explosion, preliminary assessments put it as three to four kilotonnes.

Locals who are employed in mine workings where blasting powder is used stated that the explosion was of unprecedented strength. The blast could be felt across a radius of no less than 30 to 50 kilometers from the epicenter. It took the tops off trees. The blast wave left all the dwellings for dozens of kilometers around without glass in the windows.

As with Tunguska and Chulym, all the expeditions that went to the Vitim region found nothing except magnetite and silicate spherules that resulted from the destruction of a meteorite likely to have been carrying dangerous micro-organisms.

Many witnesses saw that, after the flight of the Vitim bolide, two large radiant points moved along the same course as the meteorite. For two days these "little stars" lit up the taiga by night, as if they were looking for something. The same thing was reported by witnesses to the Tunguska incident.

Many people said that after the flight of the bolide, a glow was seen in the sky for several days that was the result of the terminator spheres’ powerful influence.
 

GEOMAGNETIC FIELD DISTURBANCES

It should be noted that atomic explosions at altitude change the conductivity of the ionosphere. This inevitably leads to a disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field - a so-called geomagnetic effect.

The geomagnetic effect of the Tunguska event was discovered in 1959 by four researchers from Tomsk:

• G. F. Plekhanov

• A. F. Kovalevsky

• V. K. Zhuravlev

• N. V. Vasilyev

On old magnetograms dating from 30 June 1908, they found traces of an unusual disturbance in the geomagnetic field.

This makes it possible to suggest that the destruction of the meteorite caused an unusual disturbance in the geomagnetic field, similar to a magnetic storm with a sudden onset but unusually short duration.

One of the oldest doctors in the Evenk Autonomous Region, Dr A. N. Deskov, recollected that rumors of some afflictions did circulate among the Evenk after the Tunguska event. For all the uncertainty of the situation, N. V. Vasilyev nevertheless observed that "in conditions of a complete absence of physicians or indeed any medical care, isolated cases of radiation sickness may have gone entirely unnoticed".

It is precisely for that reason that those who, thousands of years ago, designed and built the Installation in the Valley of Death use a high-altitude first strike to shift the consequences of the explosions away from populated areas so that people do not suffer.

Who built the Installation in Yakutia’s "Valley of Death", and why?
 

Bibliography

1. Astronomische Nachrichten, 1908, Bd. 178, N. 4262, p. 239
2. N. V. Vasilyev, A. F. Kovalevsky, S. A. Razin, L. Ye. Epiktetova, The Testimony of Witnesses to the Tunguska Fall (in Russian), Tomsk, 1981
3. Felix Zigel, The Tunguska Wonder – A Documentary History of an Unfinished Investigation (in Russian), Moscow, 1975
4. Vladimir Rubtsov, The Unknown Tunguska (in Russian)
5. A. F. Cherniayev, Stones Fall into the Sky: From the Tunguska Explosion to the Sasovo Explosion (in Russian), Moscow, 1992
6. Materials from the researches of Alexander Gutenev and Yury Mikhailovsky, Mirny, Yakutia, Russia
7. A. Yu. Olkhovatov, B. U. Rodionov, The Tunguska Glow (in Russian), Moscow, 1999
8. V. I. Koval, "On the Track of the ’Tunguska Wonder’" (in Russian), Zemlia i Vselennaya, no. 5, 1989
9. G. F. Plekhanov, A. F. Kovalevsky, V. K. Zhuravlev, N. V. Vasilyev, article (in Russian) in Izvestiya vysshikh uchebnykh zavedenii Fizika, 1960, no. 2, p. 236f
10. K. G. Ivanov, Meteoritics (in Russian), Moscow, 1961, issue 21, pp. 46-48
11. K. G. Ivanov, Geomagnetism and Astronomy (in Russian), 1961, vol. 1, no. 4, p. 616
12. G. F. Plekhanov, A. F. Kovalevsky, V. K. Zhuravlev, N. V. Vasilyev, article (in Russian) in Geologiya i geofizika, 1961, no. 6, pp. 94-96
13. A. F. Kovalevsky, "The Problem of the Tunguska Meteorite" (in Russian), Works of the USSR Geographical Society, Tomsk, 1963, vol. 5, pp. 187-194
14. K. G. Ivanov, Meteoritics (in Russian), Moscow, 1964, issue 24, pp. 141-194
15. A. V. Zolotov, Reports of the USSR Academy of Sciences (in Russian), vol. 140, no. 1, 1961, pp. 103-106
16. A. V. Zolotov, The Problem of the Tunguska Disaster of 1908 (in Russian), Minsk, 1969, pp. 155-191
17. V. K. Zhuravlev, D. V. Demin, L. N. Demina, The Problem of the Tunguska Meteorite (in Russian), Tomsk, 1967, 2nd edition
18. A. N. Dmitriyev, V. K. Zhuravlev, The Tunguska Phenomenon – a type of Sun–Earth interaction (in Russian), Novosibirsk, 1984
19. A. T. Onufriyev, article (in Russian) in Zhurnal prikladnoi mekhaniki i tekhnicheskoi fiziki, 1967, no. 2, pp. 3-15
20. I. P. Pasechnik, Space Matter on the Earth (in Russian), Novosibirsk, 1976, pp. 24-54
21. I. P. Pasechnik, Space Matter and the Earth (in Russian), Novosibirsk, 1986, pp. 62-69
22. V. K. Zhuravlev, "The Problem of the Tunguska Meteorite" (in Russian), Works of the USSR Geographical Society, Tomsk, 1963, vol. 5, pp. 195-197
23. N. V. Vasilyev et al., Shining Nocturnal Clouds and Optical Anomalies Connected to the Fall of the Tunguska Meteorite (in Russian), Moscow, 1965, pp. 62-64
24. G. M. Ildis, Z. V. Kariagina, Meteoritics (in Russian), Moscow, 1961, issue 21, pp. 32-43
25. V. K. Zhuravlev, A. N. Dmitriyev, Meteorite Researches in Siberia (in Russian), Novosibirsk, 1984, pp. 128-141
26. L. A. Mukharev, article (in Russian) in Radiotekhnika i Elektronika, 1985, vol. 30, no. 6, pp. 1151-1158
27. N. P. Chikov, Space Matter and the Earth (in Russian), Novosibirsk, 1986, pp. 215-217
28. A. N. Dmitriyev, Current Issues in Meteoritics in Siberia (in Russian), Novosibirsk, 1988, pp. 105-113
29. N. V. Vasilyev, N. P. Fast, The Physics of Mesospheric (Silvery) Clouds (in Russian), Riga, 1970, pp. 95-101.