Re: Large animal extinctions: extinction-ex-astra

Timo Niroma (timo.niroma@tilmari.pp.fi)
6 Jul 1996 23:11:53 GMT

In article <31DDBF4D.3852@earthlink.net>, p3voices <p3voices@earthlink.net> says:
>(snips)
>Of course i understand that the Tungukan event was not a small black hole
>- I was mainly trying to show how far some people can go in trying to fit
>(snips)
>Telescope about 4 months ago. There still is a lot of debate over what
>caused it, with a "loose" stony meteorite or a small cometary fragment/
>nucleus being leading contenders.
>p3

There was a very thorough investigation of the Tunguskan event a couple of years
ago.

The results were published in great detail in Scientific American either in 1995 or
in 1994.

The team that did this job came into the conclusion that the older theory, based
only on the meteorite's "easy" explosion in the atmosphere in the 7-8 kilometers
height, would prefer a cometary debris.

We today however knows, that the core of a comet is solid rock, it is not a "dirty
snowball" as it earlier was believed to be.

The team has after very careful analysis showed that the extraterrestrial was a
stony meteorite or a small stony asteroid, to be more precise.

Timo