Details Emerging On Tunguska Impact Crater 164
#space_on_irc.freenode.net (Dusty) writes "Lake Cheko in Siberia has been noted as the probable crater of the 1908 Siberian Tunguska event. This news was discussed here in December, but details on the crater were scant. Now a new paper written by Luca Gasperini, Enrico Bonatti, and Giuseppe Longo (the same team in Bologna, Italy that made news in December) has a horde of new details on the supposed crater. The team visited Lake Cheko complete with their own catamaran and completed ground-penetrating radar maps, side-scanning sonar images, aerial images, and some sample collection of Lake Cheko. Intriguingly, they also imaged an object under the sediment that may be a fragment of the impacting body. Their paper (PDF) includes a lot more details including images, side-scanning sonar image, a 3-D view of the lake, a morphobathymetric map. It's an interesting read, these dudes are good. They plan to return this summer and drill the core if weather permits, hopefully answering the question once and for all." The same team also has a more discursive article in the current Scientific American that includes some detail on the working conditions in the Siberian summer. Think: mosquitos.
First Impact.. (Score:5, Funny)
Go Slashdot !!! (Score:4, Interesting)
No more of that crap from idle on the front page, this is what you should be posting! This makes my geekiness tingle, this is what keeps me coming back. Please, for the love of God, more of the same!
Think twinkie (Score:2, Funny)
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Re:Think twinkie (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Think twinkie (Score:4, Funny)
Do you want coffee? Do I? Yes, have some. (Score:2)
whoosh... (Score:5, Funny)
BOOOM!!!
What else do we need to know about the Tunguska event?
Ok, maybe it would make a cool short film by some of animation whiz. Preferably starring the squirrel from the Ice Age shorts.
We can check it for serial numbers :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, the smart bet seems to be that event was caused by an asteroid strike. But until someone gathers some hard data, that's still only a hypothesis.
What self respecting scientist wouldn't go and examine the evidence? Because if it wasn't an asteroid strike...
Re:We can check it for serial numbers :) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We can check it for serial numbers :) (Score:4, Funny)
What self respecting scientist wouldn't go and examine the evidence?
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Could have been a comet (Score:4, Informative)
One side insists it was an Asteroid, but the material that would normally be present at an asteroid impact just isn't there. Others argue it was a comet, but analysis of comets in the last decade or so has put some real doubt into that theory as well.
At this point they pretty much have almost everything else worked out, from the velocity whatever it was had, where it traveled, where it likely went kaboom. They just don't know what the make-up of the object was. This report goes a long way towards proving exactly what the celestial object was.
C'mon editors! (Score:5, Funny)
Is it really that hard to spell 'cameraman' correctly? C'mon editors! Get on it!
Re:C'mon editors! (Score:4, Funny)
Is it really that hard to spell 'cameraman' correctly? C'mon editors! Get on it!
Catamaran is correct.
That's because: In former Russia, your Tunguska's got a catamaran.
Re:C'mon editors! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:C'mon editors! (Score:5, Funny)
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It's all "meme, meme, meme" with you, isn't it?
Re:C'mon editors! (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh...I assumed it was "catamite". Who was their cameraman, riding in the catamaran. Say that three times fast.
don't ruin my mental imagery (Score:2)
something like werner herzog's fanatical devotion to making fitzcarraldo [wikipedia.org]
Re:C'mon editors! (Score:5, Funny)
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catamaroon
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SciFi movine waiting to happen! (Score:2)
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Umm,... that's been done before [imdb.com]. ;-)
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Yes, many times over. I haven't seen Crystal Skull yet, but can name "Quatermass and the Pit aka 2million years to earth," "Sphere" with Dustin Hoffman, lets not forget "The Abyss" to name a few.
However, it could make for a topical SciFi with some current events.
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Very interesting article (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't wait and see their results from core drilling the lake.
There have been several other impacts that were recorded by mankind (one in Estonia, recorded by Pliny the Younger).
The Tunguska event could be mis-interpreted as a nuclear strike if it were to happen today over a populated area. We need to increase our understanding of the frequency and effects of bolide impacts upon our planet.
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Or, increase investment in bomb shelter manufacturers :)
Re:Very interesting article (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought nuclear strikes were highly radioactive. That and other clues would be easy to gather very quickly.
Re:Very interesting article (Score:5, Insightful)
My fear is that someone would mis-interpret an incoming meteor as a nuclear weapon and initiate a launch on their perceived threats.
If Moscow, Washington DC, Beijing or London were wiped out in a meteorite strike that was not detected before the destruction. Do you think that missile forces would not be put on high alert?
We are not that far away from the days of "Fail Safe".
Re:Very interesting article (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a fear likely to be realized, fortunately. If a major strategic city is vaporized, it's almost a certainty that it was destroyed by a strategic nuke. If a random area of countryside or open ocean is vaporized, it's almost certainly a meteotie/asteroid/comet.
The percentage of Earth's surface covered by major strategic cities is miniscule. If an asteroid ever does hit one square on, that will be a sign that someone up there has decided to pull another Sodom & Gamorrah.
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Sure, they'd be put on 'high alert'. But 'high alert' isn't 'launching'. (And there really isn't such a thing as 'high alert' anyhow, either you are on alert or you are not.)
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We are pretty good at tracking things in the sky these days simply because we're worried about your scenario. Fear not, we won't be accidentally involved in a nuclear war. We'll handle that all by ourselves, the old fashioned way-some asshole will act stupid.
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"oops! we thought it was a nuclear strike. my bad. Sorry."
compare this to:
"oops, we thought Saddam had active WMD programs, and was 40 minutes away from launching a chemical strike on Tel Aviv. Sorry. My bad."
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I thought nuclear strikes were highly radioactive. That and other clues would be easy to gather very quickly.
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Nurse or nuke ? (but that was about Ronald Reagan)
Re:Very interesting article (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether both sides would have held their fire in that event is hard to tell.
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What if its trajectory had been just right to have it impact three hours earlier? The timing was completely random, so it could have gone either way (or any other way).
himi
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Our world is certainly too much armed to the teeth, on hair triggers around the globe, jumping to believe the worst of each other. But inventing such an improbable confluence of several improbable events as a threat worth addressing is almost as irrational as pretending that the mutual destruction machine we've erected is not a threat in itself. There are real threats making that machine risky to dea
Sum of All Fears (Score:2)
We all know Tesla did it (Score:4, Funny)
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Personally, I'm in the group that thinks Flight of the Conchords did it by the power of Bowie. They took acid, then caused the trees to explode by playing David Bowie music for them. Even though Bowie himself wasn't there, the music still had that much power.
RE: Siberian Summer. Think Mosquitos. (Score:5, Funny)
And lonely, vast expanses of nothingness (Score:2)
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Evidence against (Score:4, Informative)
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/tungmet.html [uga.edu]
Re:Evidence against (Score:5, Informative)
1 Our sub-bottom acoustic reïection data show that, of a 10 m thick sediment pile, only the top
1 ± 0.5 m is laminated, ïne-grained, normal lacustrine sediments (Gasperini et al., 2007). The
lower chaotic material appears not to be deposited by normal lacustrine sedimentation.
2 210 Pb and 137 Cs datings on sediment cores from the lake suggest sedimentation rates of roughly 1cm/yr)1(Gasperini et al., 2001). Assuming this rate is mostly due to ïne-grained material transported into the lake from the Kimchu
River, the thin lacustrine sequence is compatible with a young (100 years) age for the lake.
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"we started our work at
Lake Cheko on the assumption that
it was older than the TE: our objective
was to find markers of the TE in the
lake's sediments. However, as our
study progressed, we began to question
the old age of the lake for the
following reasons:
1 Our sub-bottom acoustic reflection
data show that, of a 10 m thick
sediment pile, only the top 1 ± 0.5 m is laminated, finegrained,
"normal" lacustrine sediments
(Gasperini et al., 2007). The
lower chaotic material appears not
to be deposited by
slip (Score:2)
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this is not real science (Score:2)
for the upcoming x-files movie this july [xfiles.com]
relax, i'm joking, but what is described sounds exactly like an x-files episode, doesn't it?
Re:this is not real science (Score:5, Funny)
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For those that can't seem to find it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:For those that can't seem to find it (Score:5, Informative)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=60.964,+101.86&ie=UTF8&ll=60.963631,101.859055&spn=0.010102,0.016522&t=h&z=16 [google.com]
Re:For those that can't seem to find it (Score:5, Funny)
Somethings just not right about that.
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http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=37.129221,-116.069784&spn=0.020563,0.035834&t=h&z=15 [google.com]
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All your blood are belong to us (Score:4, Funny)
Oh
Not the original paper ... (Score:5, Informative)
The original paper by Gasperini et al. (2007) [blackwell-synergy.com] is also available as PDF and HTML [blackwell-synergy.com].
I'm not particularly convinced by the evidence they present. It's quite circumstantial. What they need to find and sample is an ejecta-related layer in the lake stratigraphy or in a lake nearby, and you'd think that if such a large impactor hit the ground there would be plenty of micrometeorite debris in the sediments of the surrounding area. Geomorphological evidence and age just isn't enough.
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There is also the explanation of a sink hole, but that would be rather round, instead of elongated. The final proof would definitely be the discovery of micrometeorite material in the sediments, or oth
An alternative hypothesis (Score:2, Interesting)
For more details and an alternative explanation, see the following.
W. Kundt (2001), " The 1908 Tunguska catastrophe [ias.ac.in]", Current Science, 81: 399-407.
Dr. Kundt is at the Universit
well... (Score:3, Interesting)
D'ya think (Score:2)
Semen Semenov? Ouch. (Score:5, Funny)
That's... a really, really unfortunate name, dude.
(I love that they managed to work "heat" and "conception" into a sentence about a guy named Semen.)
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The name actually sounds more like Semyon Semyonov, pretty ordinary (except I wouldn't give my son a surname echo for a first name; matter of taste).
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It's a UFO (Score:2)
That would be a downed UFO [wikipedia.org].
Mosquitos ++ (Score:5, Interesting)
Mosquitoes to the point of anaphylaxis (well, that was what the rig's medic was afraid of, which is why he evacuated me back to the base camp).
Mosquitoes that can maintain eye contact at a meter range (i.e you can see it's eyes at a meter range) through the window of the car, then launch an assault on this nice juicy mammal, only being stopped by the glass of the window.
Mosquitoes that can keep pace with you while driving at 40km/hr on a dirt road.
Mosquitoes that can bite you through a leather glove, 20 times in one evening's work. They choose the clipboard hand, because you can't swat with that and get your work done.
Don't get me wrong - Siberia is interesting, but don't forget the industrial strength insect repellent and the appropriate clothing. If you don't know what's appropriate, ask a bee keeper. And don't forget the vaccination against tick-borne encaphalitis (which includes Lyme disease, I believe), which takes several weeks to become effective.
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Re: Mosquitos ++ (Score:4, Interesting)
Between end of May and mid-July, we traveled through the West-Siberian plain. We generally encountered four major types of flying insects there:
Depending on where we camped, we also had problems with ants.
The density of the mosquitoes and biting flies were approximately the same as I've encountered on previous bicycle trips in northern Yukon and Alaska. However, they were much more widespread and much more continuous, day after day. Every place we camped for a month and a half, we had insects. Sometimes worse, but always present. (That was not the case in Alaska.) If one were working in one place or traveling slower than 20km/hr, I could see why that would be even worse.
However, either the situation is even worse where RockDoctor was at than where I cycled or there is (slight) exageration here, e.g. I encountered biting flies that could do 20km/hr but not mosquitoes.
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I mean, this cannot be cheap. Do you get sponsors? Are you a scientist with a grant? I love my home, my job is okay, but Ithink when I read you're post 'Wow, that would be cool' yet I cannot imagine how one disconnects from re
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Russia is a relatively expensive country, but bicycle travel and camping is not that expensive. It is also a good way to experience a country since it brings you in out of the way places without as many tourists.
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Northern Siberia, however, is hell. I always wished for army-style chemical protection suite when I worked in Siberian tundra.
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Cycling is one thing. I'd be very worried about the attitude of the Russian drivers to cyclists. I don't think they'd be very friendly.
That's probably the big car-chasing ones I met.
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Which parts of West Siberia were you in?
We cycled across all of Russia from St Petersburg to Vladivostok going via Kazan, Ekaterinburg, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Krasnojarsk, Irkutsk, Ulan Ude, Chita, Khabarovsk mostly on the larger roads. Five months in total. Almost no insects before Kazan at end of May. Also, not as many insects after Krasnojarsk in mid-July. Thats why I singled out Western Siberia though there is also a time component.
We typically camped not too far from the road, and there is a lot of low marshy ground. Typical proce
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You've just described most of Russia east of the Urals >G< . Well, to a first approximation anyway. A few hundred miles north-south makes quite a difference between degree of woodland versus open swamp, but it's all pretty swampy.
Those "net head" hats are a life-saver, aren't they?
Mosquitoes - Any Good at All? (Score:2)
I know, they kill millions of people with malaria, and we're not ready to launch the familiocide genetic weapon yet, but what will future humans decide?
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No seriously, that's the answer. All the answer that's necessary.
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Why would that cause us to not want to eradicate them?
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It doesn't address the question at all. To find the answer for that question, you need to look into your own morals. Or, if you've surrendered your moral judgement to someone else, ask them.
I chose to not pursue studies and technologies that would or could lead to extermination of mosquitoes (or any other organism), but that's a personal choice. I am not your guide, and nor is nature.
Con
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I suspect that unless any of the sterile breeders or vaccination programs are effective, at some point humans will make this choice, though I'm not sure I'll be around to see it.
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Good point; bats too.
Before humans learned to disregard common sense we didn't build our towns on swampland.
I've got mosquitos aplenty and I don't live near any swamps. Ours are annoying but not deadly.
I've got my own little bug paradise by the Skeena River in B.C. but it is habitable.>
Yeah, but if your children were dying you might feel differently.
Carolina bays (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pictures (Score:4, Funny)
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