Free_Astronomy_-_SeptemberOctober_2019

SMALL BODIES 25

J

ust over 111 years have passed since the

famous Tunguska event, and during this

long period, various hypotheses have

been put forward as to what really hap-

pened. Even today in the scientific literature,

research is reported that attempts to accu-

rately determine the nature of the celestial

body that caused the disaster and to calcu-

late the probability that one day a similar

event might be repeated in an area not nec-

essarily uninhabited, as was the case at Tun-

guska. Among the most recent works on this

topic is research inspired by a seminar held

at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon

Valley and sponsored by NASA’s Planetary

Defense Coordination Office. The results

were published in a series of articles in a

special issue of the magazine Icarus. Thanks

also to the direct study of more recent minor

events, such as the one of Chelyabinsk, the

research as a whole has improved the sce-

nario described so far by previous works.

I

n the background,

a dramatic repre-

sentation of the

Tunguska event

moments before

the explosion of

the asteroid in

the Siberian sky.

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