{"id":117378,"date":"2020-12-19T16:42:34","date_gmt":"2020-12-20T00:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/tunguska-explosion-in-1908-caused-by-asteroid-grazing-earth"},"modified":"2020-12-19T16:42:34","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T00:42:34","slug":"tunguska-explosion-in-1908-caused-by-asteroid-grazing-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/tunguska-explosion-in-1908-caused-by-asteroid-grazing-earth","title":{"rendered":"Tunguska explosion in 1908 caused by asteroid grazing Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/tunguska-explosion-in-1908-caused-by-asteroid-grazing-earth.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So we\u2019ve had close calls before, huh?<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>In the early morning of June 30, 1908, a massive explosion flattened entire forests in a remote region of Eastern Siberia along the Tunguska River. Curiously, the explosion left no crater, creating a mystery that has puzzled scientists ever since \u2014 what could have caused such a huge blast without leaving any remnants of itself?<\/p>\n<p>Now Daniil Khrennikov at the Siberian Federal University in Russia and colleagues have published a new model of the incident that may finally resolve the mystery. Khrennikov and co say the explosion was caused by an asteroid that grazed the Earth, entering the atmosphere at a shallow angle and then passing out again into space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe argue that the Tunguska event was caused by an iron asteroid body, which passed through the Earth\u2019s atmosphere and continued to the near-solar orbit,\u201d they say. If they are correct, the theory suggests Earth escaped an even larger disaster by a hair\u2019s breadth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So we\u2019ve had close calls before, huh? In the early morning of June 30, 1908, a massive explosion flattened entire forests in a remote region of Eastern Siberia along the Tunguska River. Curiously, the explosion left no crater, creating a mystery that has puzzled scientists ever since \u2014 what could have caused such a huge [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":609,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroid-comet-impacts","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/609"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}