At 7:17 am on 30 June 1908, the largest explosion recorded in human history to date reverberated throughout our planet, known as the Tunguska catastrophe.
The Tunguska event was a large explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia.
The explosion over the sparsely populated Eastern Siberian Taiga flattened 2,000 square kilometres (770 square miles) of forest, yet caused no known human casualties. The explosion is generally attributed to the air burst of a meteor.
It is classified as an impact event, even though no impact crater has been found; the object is thought to have disintegrated at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) rather than to have hit the surface of the Earth.
The Tunguska event is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history. Studies have yielded different estimates of the meteoroid’s size, on the order of 60 to 190 metres (200 to 620 feet), depending on whether the body was a comet or a denser asteroid.
Big Bang In Tunguska identifies the reasons why Tunguska has evolved into a phenomenon and points out the curious results produced by this mythical event in culture and economy.
- Info
- Release date2008
- Full runtime
- Director(s)Christoph Schuch