Today in History: Largest impact from space ever recorded happens in Russia

I include this with great enthusiasm because I, like most people, was completely unaware that this had happened at all until it was pointed out to me. The details are shady because it happened more than 100 years ago and there wasn't much evidence preserved but this "fireball" from space of unknown origin felled 80 million trees over more than 2000 square kilometers.

The year was 1908

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You'll have to forgive the crudity of this image, but cameras weren't in everyone's pockets in the early 20th century, and probably even less so in an area in Siberia where very few people live even today.

It was classified as an impact event although there was never any sort of impact crater that was discovered although scientists have a pretty good idea about what the epicenter was. There is very little in the way of evidence and we don't have any other impacts to really compare it to, so there are a lot of pretty wild theories out there that range from scientific to supernatural.

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The area that is presumed to be the epicenter of the explosion still has no trees growing on it but the scientific community is not even in agreement about if this is actually the center. I guess they didn't think it was very important, especially back in 1908 because it wasn't even officially investigated until 1927.

Further expeditions to attempt to understand this event have been carried out ever since but mostly these expeditions, complete with newer and more advanced technology succeeded only in disproving past hypothesis rather than creating their own.

It is generally accepted in the scientific community that a massive meteorite or even a comet entered the Earth's atmosphere only to reach super-heated temperatures on entry which resulted in the object exploding several kilometres above the surface. This would explain why no impact crater or even a meaningful amount of "space debris" has ever been found.

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god of thunder!

Some of the more interesting theories suggest that Agda, the god of Thunder was displeased with the Siberian Evenki people and wanted to show them who was boss. Screw you trees!

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Funnily (or tragically) enough, the Evenki people are part of the reason why the area was never explored until nearly 20 years later. The Evenki tribe declared the area sacred and even killed Soviet explorations teams that attempted to enter the area in the early 20th century.

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aliens!

Anything that comes from space or is suspected to come from space or even things that can't be explained by traditional means will eventually be attributed to aliens and this event is no exception.

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Multiple books have been written about how the event was created by a botched UFO landing that resulted in the star-cruiser exploding above the surface. I have not read these books but it does seem a little dubious to me that noting even remotely resembling any sort of technology has been found at the site, ever. A rock with some weird levels of nitrogen might appear every now and then but nothing that resembles any sort of spacecraft.

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My money is on the UFO theory, but I want to go a step further and say that the explosion was caused by uploading a virus with a MacBook, because of course they are compatible with alien technology.

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So I hope that you too didn't know that this even happened because I didn't and there is a lot of fun information out there about this and how it simply remains one of those unsolved mysteries that has died out in popularity over the years. The fact of the matter is that nobody really knows what happened and even though it has been suggested that the impact force was that of 1,000 atomic bombs, it seems unlikely we ever will find out until the aliens come back to tell us about it.

And it all happened today, 112 years ago.