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From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.aviation,net.astro
Subject: Re: Something else to watch out for!
Message-ID: <674@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Jun-85 19:54:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: lsuc.674
Posted: Wed Jun 19 19:54:50 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Jun-85 21:26:57 EDT
References: <11270@brl-tgr.ARPA<1199@phoenix.UUCP> <1679@amdahl.UUCP>
Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader|LSUC|Toronto)
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Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
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Xref: utcs net.aviation:1605 net.astro:684
Summary: This reminds me of the 1908 Siberian explosion

> > Anyway, this JAL flight was cruising at some normal jet-type altitude
> > ... Suddenly, directly ahead, the pilot saw the clouds begin to rise up
> > in an enormous bulge. The cloud bulge grew at fantastic speed, and 
> > soon reached up and sideways for distances measureable in miles.
> >
> > ... the theory is that that airplane had the first 
> > observed encounter with a meteor.

> I can't imagine how hitting a cloud layer - no matter how
> dense - would be like hitting the ground (even at meteoric speeds).

I was just reading an article about the great mysterious explosion in
Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, and it occurred to me that this might have been
a similar event.  What was observed in 1908 was something streaking
across the sky, followed by a vertically oriented flash of light and
sounds of a tremendous explosion.  The area was wilderness even before
the devastation and what with the war and the revolution nobody got
around to exploring the place for about 15 years.  They found the trees
blown outward from the center over a radius of quite a number of miles;
but at the very center, the bare trunks of trees were still standing.
This proves that what hit the ground was not a solid object but a blast
of air (very hot air; everything was scorched).

So perhaps what the JAL pilot observed was a smaller version of this
incident.  It wasn't big enough to be heard noticeably at great distances,
and if it made a flash it was lost in the clouds; but there was a large
expansion of air, and that suggests it was driven by heat.  Perhaps
this event simply was not powerful enough for the blast of hot air to
reach the ground.

The trouble is that we don't know what happened in 1908.  According to the
article I read, which was in the latest issue of "Science 85", the leading
theory nowadays is that the remains of a small, dead comet hit the earth.
(One does have to explain why no comet was seen--hence the "small, dead").
Another tenable theory is that it was a chunk of antimatter.  (One then
has to explain what chunks of antimatter are doing in our neighborhood.)
The proposal that it was a tiny black hole is disproved, by the way; the
trees would not have remained standing in such a gravity.

Does anyone know how close to the scene the nearest land- or sea-based
observers would have been, this time?

Mark Brader