At night, you can sometimes see a meteor if there are no
bright lights nearby. We call it a “falling star.” Most meteors die as they
enter the earth’s atmosphere. The friction of the meteors passing through the
atmosphere burns them up, even though they are made of rock and metal.
When a meteor hits the earth, it is then called a meteorite.
Most are very small. However, occasionally in the past, large meteorites hit
the earth and made huge craters. There is a one in Australia and another in
Arizona. They are both thousands of years old.
Was a meteorite the cause of the explosion in Tunguska, in
central Siberia, in 1908? On June 30 of that year, the inhabitants of the
lonely Tungus plateau saw a very bright light in the sky. Seconds later, they
heard a tremendous explosion. As far away as Europe, people saw their night sky
illuminated. For years afterwards, they talked about the brightness of the sky
that night.
Tunguska is so remote that it was twenty years before
scientists traveled there to look for the cause of the explosion. Even after
all that time, the area was still completely destroyed. Trees were black from
the explosion and lay flat on the ground for a twenty-mile radius. At first,
scientists thought a meteorite was the cause. When they couldn’t find a crater,
they thought it might be the blast from an early top-secret atomic bomb. Others
said it might be a huge ball of fire. A lot of the theories were really just
guesswork. Newspapers printed articles on the fireball of Tunguska. Some
journalists went further. They wrote about the crash landing of an alien space
ship.
Years have passed since then, but even today no one can
fully explain the Tunguska explosion. One recent theory is that a meteor
exploded just before it hit the earth’s surface. That is why there was no
crater like those in Arizona and Australia. However, no one knows for certain,
and the explosion in Tunguska remains a mystery.
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