The year was 1908 and the place was Tunguska, Siberia. It was just another bitterly freezing day on June 30, 1908. Another day in a long chain of days that stretched back into time immemorial in this land that never changes and before 7:17 AM there was nothing to distinguish it. But at 7:17 in the morning something happened, something that the world would never forget. A tremendous explosion occurred in the sky. Some think that a meteorite impacted with the earth. The explosion was so huge that in was detected on a seismic device in Washington D.C. People who were living in the town of Vanavara, which is forty miles away from the impact, were knocked down by the shock wave. A train which was traveling almost four hundred miles away had to stop for fear it would be derailed. The explosion had been much, much greater than that of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II. Some scientists believe the explosion was equal to a 50 megaton H-Bomb.

Asteroid - Lets hope one of these never heads for earth
Photo Source: NASA

But, the question is was it really a meteorite that exploded? There are many different theories on this subject. A crater has never been detected and the trees that were flattened from the center out look much like the trees that were flattened at Mt. St. Helens, in Washington State in the U.S. One story that seems to persist for almost the hundred years since the explosion concerns Nikola Tesla a brilliant Croatian scientist who had come to this country and had worked for Thomas Edison before they became rivals. Mr. Tesla had built a laboratory on Long Island in New York. In the back he constructed a huge radio tower. Tesla performed much research on high energy electricity. The story goes that Tesla was working on a death ray that could put so much high energy electricity in one area that it would cause an explosion and wipe out all life within certain parameters and that he beamed this ray to Tunguska, which he knew was a barren place, as a test causing the great explosion of 1908. As proof they cite his offer to the US Army to give them a death ray that would be more powerful than the atom bomb they were working on. The army refused and when Tesla died all his papers were taken by the government.

Tesla wasn't alone in being accused of using a death ray to cause the Tunguska explosion. A scientist living in the Welsh mountains by the name of Harry Grindell-Matthews also was believed to have an electrical death ray. The difference between the so called death rays was that Grindell-Matthews's ray didn't seem to possess much power at the time he is accused of using it.

UFO buffs insist that because there is no crater present that the explosion was caused by something that blew up in the air and that at this primitive time the only thing that would have sufficient power to cause such damage would be a ufo. They believe that the ufo blew up like a nuclear bomb over the woods and this is why the trees are flattened in such a particular way. We are assuming a lot here. We are assuming that ufos exist, that they are powered by some force that if blown up would equal a nuclear blast and that a ufo doesn't have safeguards against this type of explosion. What do you think?

A Russian geologist has his own theory on what happened at Tunguska. He thinks that all of the above theories are wrong. He believes pressure built up in the earth and a jet of fluid burst out of the earth. He states that mineral buildups are evident in the area. The idea is that gas escaped from the earth and when the fluid broke through it ignited the gas causing the explosion.

Halley's Comet
Photo Source: NASA

Another theory states that Tunguska wasn't hit by a meteorite at all but that a chunk of a comet did the damage. Because a comet is mostly ice, the theory goes on, it evaporated after it exploded, thus no crater. One has to wonder, how many times has a comet ever hit the earth?

We will probably never really know what caused the explosion but there are many theories out there. If you comb the internet you will see just about every possible theory, some which seem plausible and some which are laughable. Most scientists today believe that it was a meteorite that hit the earth and that the reason there is no crater is that it broke up into dust and tiny pieces. This does, on the face of it, seem more reasonable. But there is certainly something strange about the Tesla story, so strange when you realize who brilliant the man was, that there is a slim chance, probably very slim, of it being true.