Tunguska-1908 and similar events in light of the New Explosive Cosmogony of minor bodies

Abstract

The well-known Tunguska-1908 phenomenon (TP) problems (the fast transfer of the kinetic energy of the meteoroid W~10-50 Mt TNT to air, with its heating to T>10^4 K at an altitude of 5-10 km, the final turn of the smoothly sloping, ~0-20^o to horizon, trajectory of the body through ~10^o to the West, the pattern and area of the tree-fall and trees' scorching by heat radiation, etc.) allow a simple solution within the New Explosive Cosmogony (NEC) of minor bodies, as opposed to other approaches. The NEC considers the short-period (SP) comet nuclei, to which the Tunguska body belonged, to be fragments produced in explosions of massive icy envelopes of Ganymede-type bodies saturated by products of bulk electrolysis of ices to the form of a 2H2+O2 solid solution. The nearly tangent entry into the Earth's atmosphere with V~20 km/s of such a nucleus, ~200-500 m in size and ~(5-50)x10^12 g in mass, also saturated by 2H2+O2, initiated detonation of its part of ~10^12 g at an altitude of 5-10 km. This resulted in deflection of this fraction trajectory by 5^o-10^o, and fast expansion with ~2 km/s of its detonation products brought about their fast slowing down by the air, heating of the latter to T>10^4 K and a phenomenon of high-altitude explosion. On crossing the Earth's atmosphere, the main part of the unexploded nucleus escaped into space, and this body moving presently in an SP orbit should eventually be identified in time. Its impact with W~250-3000 Mt TNT on the Earth's surface (which could occur in 1908) would have produced a crater up to ~3.5-8 km in size, with an ejection of dust that would have brought about a climatic catastrophe. The processes involved in the TP are resembling those accompanying falling P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 onto Jupiter and, possibly, the impact-caused Younger Dryas cooling ~13 ka ago.